James Baker | Thursday, 09 December 2021

FELIXSTOWE, the UK’s largest container port, has had most vessel calls cancelled of any European port, as carriers seek to avoid those terminals affected by congestion.

Carriers are skipping port calls as they seek to avoid congestion and restore schedule reliability. Europe’s top ports all saw vessel calls decrease as schedules were revised

Figures from Alphaliner comparing actual ship calls with pro forma schedules for the period from July to December show that almost one third of Felixstowe’s calls were omitted.

“Our survey clearly shows that Felixstowe was worst hit by the temporary schedule changes and ad hoc adjustments,” Alphaliner said. “The top-three ports, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, also saw a reduction of between 20.2% to 30.3% of planned calls. Smaller ports have fared much better.”

The 18 Asia–northern Europe loops operated by the three mega alliances skipped a total of 383 port calls in northern Europe over the past five months due to severe port congestion, it added.

The figure represents nearly a quarter of all scheduled calls in the period.

The addition of 77 ad hoc inducement calls had only partly compensated for these port omissions, Alphaliner said.

“The majority of inducement calls were made in the smaller ports of Wilhelmshaven (24), Bremerhaven (16), Le Havre (11) and Zeebrugge (8), which unsurprisingly posted the biggest growth in third-quarter traffic.”

Port calls were being omitted for a variety of reasons, it noted.

The first of these was ad hoc omissions of certain ports on specific voyages, to avoid congestion-related delays.

Others, however, were due to the temporary removal or transfer of calls for a period of time in an effort to restore schedule reliability.

“Many of these temporary adjustments have already been extended to March 2022 due to ongoing port congestion,” Alphaliner said.

But there were also a large number of blanked sailings which were caused by the late arrival of ships at ports of origin.

“This is especially the case for The Alliance’s ships, which continue to maintain the majority of their calls in Europe, thus leading to much longer round-voyage durations. The late arrival of ships in the Far East has forced Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, HMM and Yang Ming to regularly blank sailings.”

Carriers had also stopped doing double calls at some ports, on both the inbound and outbound voyage. This had been seen at Rotterdam, which recorded a 25% fall in scheduled calls.

At Felixstowe, which received only 104 of the 154 calls scheduled during the period, the number of calls from its key 2M alliance was reduced to just three in October, when UK import cargo on the AE7/Condor service was redirected to Wilhemshaven and Antwerp.

But the drop in Asia calls in the third quarter of this year did not affect container throughput at the top-three European ports, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, in the period from January to September.

Rotterdam achieved container growth of 7.8% in the first nine months of the year to reach 11.5m teu, despite a 25.6% drop in Asia calls in the July-November period.

Antwerp, however, lost some market share as container traffic growth was limited to 2.8%, at 9.1m teu.

Hamburg, the third-busiest port in Europe, managed to increase liftings by 2.4% to 6.5m teu.

But Alphaliner noted that its smaller rivals at Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven had seen gains of 10% and 49% respectively, as carriers sought less crowded terminals.

Will Waters | Wednesday, 24 November 2021

Although progress has been made to restore main routes to the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regions, rail and road operations servicing the key Canadian west coast port remain impacted by the recent flooding in British Columbia

Rail and road operations servicing the Port of Vancouver remain impacted by the recent flooding in British Columbia (BC), although progress to restore main routes to the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regions has been made in the last few days, and marine terminals at the Port of Vancouver are still operating.

In an operations update yesterday, the Port of Vancouver said “rail and highway infrastructure restoration work has re-established some key connections between the BC interior and the west coast. Anchorage demand remains high and truck operations at all container terminals remain steady”.

But it said the Vancouver gateway “continues to experience disrupted rail and truck movement due to flooding”, although “significant progress on repairs were made over the weekend on both rail and highway infrastructure”.

An operations update yesterday from shipping line Hapag-Lloyd highlighted that vessel delays, increased yard congestion and heightened anchorage demand are expected at Port of Vancouver for the time being.

Regarding GCT Delta Port Terminal, it said the majority of vessel operations have been idled until further notice, with no local export receiving until further notice, although the import CY gate remains open.

Meanwhile, at DP World Fraser Surrey, it said there were currently “limited operations”.

On the road side, the line said Highways 7, 99, 3 are now open for essential travel only, but

Highway 5 remains closed. And on the Rail side it said rail services were expected to re-start mid-week, but said “a re-start will entail a slow re-commencement and a lengthy recovery period is expected to clear the backlog”.

It reported that all CP Terminals in Canada – excluding Vancouver Intermodal (VIF) – are re-commencing acceptance of DRY Export loads (no reefers), excluding those to DPW Fraser Surrey. But for CN Rail, it said all exports destined to the Port of Vancouver are currently embargoed or not accepted.  

Southern California’s ports of Long Beech and Los Angeles are delaying the implementation of financial penalties on shipping lines for containers left on marine terminals as the situation appears to improve

Containers are moving out of ports more quickly after threat of financial penalties, so implementation of Container Dwell Fee is delayed until 22 November

Consideration of the so-called Container Dwell Fee will be pushed back until November 22, according to a statement. 

“There’s been significant improvement in clearing import containers from our docks in recent weeks,” said Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka. “I’m grateful to the many nodes of the supply chain, from shipping lines, marine terminals, trucks and cargo owners, for their increased collaborative efforts.”

Under the new system which was announced in late October, the ports were due to begin assessing a fee of $100 per loaded container from November 15.

The fee will increase by $100 per day for containers that have dwelled at the ports for nine days and are contracted to move by truck, or that have dwelled for six days and are contracted to move by rail.

Before the pandemic-induced import surge began in mid-2020, on average, containers for local delivery remained on container terminals under four days, while containers destined for trains dwelled less than two days, said the statement.

Since the introduction of fines, the twin ports have seen a decline of 26% combined in aging cargo on the docks over the past three weeks.

 “We’re encouraged by the progress our supply chain partners have made in helping our terminals shed long-dwelling import containers. Clearly, everyone is working together to speed the movement of cargo and reduce the backlog of ships off the coast as quickly as possible,” said Port of Long Beach executive director Mario Cordero. “Postponing consideration of the fee provides more time, while keeping the focus on the results we need.”

The measures, developed in coordination with the US government, are part of the efforts by the world’s largest import country to alleviate the logistics bottleneck that has been threatening its supply chain stability.

The move, however, has sparked a heated debate regarding which parties should pay to speed up the US container flows, with the National Industrial Transportation League arguing that carriers should not be allowed to pass on the expenses to importers.

Sea-Intelligence has published issue 122 of the Global Liner Performance (GLP) report, with schedule reliability figures up to and including September 2021

As the report itself is quite comprehensive and covers schedule reliability across 34 different trade lanes and 60+ carriers, this press release will only cover the global highlights from the full report.

Schedule reliability improved marginally in September 2021, by 0.6 percentage points to 34.0%, maintaining the range of 34%-40% seen throughout the year. The only “positive”, if one should call it that, is that schedule reliability is not plummeting further. On a Y/Y level, schedule reliability in September 2021 was down -22.0 percentage points. The average delay for late vessel arrivals also improved marginally, dropping to 7.27 days, albeit still the highest figure for this month, which has been a theme throughout 2021.

Maersk Line was once again the most reliable top-14 carrier in September 2021, with schedule reliability of 44.2%, followed by Hamburg Süd with 37.3%. Another two carriers had schedule reliability between 30%-40%, with only four carriers recording schedule reliability of 20%-30%. Six carriers had schedule reliability of under 20%, with Evergreen recording the lowest September 2021 schedule reliability of just 11.7%. Six carriers recorded a M/M improvement in schedule reliability, while no carrier recorded a Y/Y improvement in schedule reliability, with all carriers except Maersk Line recording double-digit Y/Y declines of over 20.0 percentage points.

US road freight shortages that have been driving up prices over much of the last year are likely to worsen as demand builds through the summer, further adding to inflationary costs.

Please be advised that the Port of Felixstowe are currently experiencing operational delays. The implementation of a new operating system over the weekend has resulted in severe delays and cancellations across all areas of port operations, including rail, road and shipside container moves.

A number of factors are converging to drive up trucking rates and tighten capacity including winter weather conditions, rising fuel costs, and the new Electronic Logging Device mandate, which is having the effect of reducing capacity, growing import volumes at US ports and a nationwide driver shortage.

Increasing regulation and a shortage of trucks is causing slowdowns in Canada’s intermodal supply chain.

These challenges include regulations on electronic log devices in the US, infrastructure weakness and congestion, a shortage of drivers and increasing costs of operation. For beneficial cargo owners, the problems are being compounded by high service demand for hazardous, reefer and other specialist cargo. The situation is exacerbated by limited free time at US and Canadian rail depots.

Several shipping lines have cancelled their services to and from Qatar and begun seeking new solutions for customers after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) extended a ban on vessels entering its ports under the Qatari flag to include vessels destined for or arriving from Qatar.

Qatar Ports Management Company has confirmed the opening of Hamad port in Qatar from the 1st December 2016.  This port will replace Doha port.  The last container vessel to operate at Doha port will be on 30th November 2016. Hamad port is located 40 km south of Doha, the capital of Qatar.