Tag: <span>International Ports</span>

A three-day strike has caused massive disruptions to land, sea and air traffic.

Belgian trade unions orchestrated a widespread strike this week, which ended on Wednesday. However, it continues to cause challenges for shipping traffic in and out of Belgian ports, states container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd in a message to customers on Thursday.

“Shipping traffic has now resumed, and port operations are gradually stabilizing. However, there is still significant congestion at this time,” the statement from Hapag-Lloyd reads.

The shipping company expects the problems to cause delays in shipping traffic into next week.

“We are working closely with our partners and port authorities to manage the situation and ensure that delays are kept to an absolute minimum,” the statement reads.

Ship traffic and port operations in Belgium have been completely halted since Monday as a result of the strike, which has also affected train, bus, and air traffic.

The strike is the latest in several protests against the Belgian coalition government’s proposals for pension and labor market reforms.

Source: SHIPPINGWATCH

CK Hutchison is in talks with a “major strategic investor from China” to join the BlackRock-Terminal Investment Limited (TiL) consortium in their planned $23 billion purchase of Hutchison’s non-China terminals, the Hong Kong conglomerate confirmed Monday.

Hutchison, whose businesses include ports, telecoms, real estate and retail, did not provide details on the Chinese investor, although it is widely thought to be Cosco Shipping Holdings.

Cosco’s potential involvement follows speculation the Chinese government was pushing for a Chinese shipping group to join the BlackRock-TiL group as a condition of Beijing giving regulatory approval to the deal, announced in March.

TiL is the terminals division of Gianluigi Aponte’s Mediterranean Shipping Co. The deal would also make MSC/TiL the world’s biggest terminal operator, with throughput volumes of more than 130 million TEUs, according to Drewry.

Hutchison’s comments about Chinese involvement were made in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange following the weekend expiry of the 145-day exclusive negotiating period Hutchison had with BlackRock-TiL. Despite the end of the exclusivity period, Hutchison said it “remains in discussions with members of the consortium with a view to inviting a major strategic investor from [China] to join as a significant member of the consortium.”

“Changes to the membership of the consortium and the structure of the transaction [will be needed for the deal] to be capable of being approved by all relevant authorities,” Hutchison added in the statement.

It gave no deadline for the changes to be finalized. Instead, the company said it “intends to allow such time as is required for such discussions to achieve” the alterations.

Details please refer to the JOC news.

Source: JOC

 

Shippers in North Europe are being warned to expect further delays and disrupted services during August and September when a wave of inbound containers from Asia arrive at already-congested gateway ports.

Strong import demand in Europe over the past few months has kept ships full and volume growing in double digits; that demand is expected to continue through the third quarter, piling more pressure on the overstretched terminals.

“The peak will be August and September, and we also expect a peak in congestion until it gets better in the fourth quarter,” said Michael Amri, global sea freight business development manager at Hellmann Worldwide Logistics.

Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, the Singapore-listed port operator that controls Hutchison’s Hong Kong and mainland China port interests, said China’s exports to Europe in the second half of the year are set to continue the double-digit growth seen in the first half.

“Growth in China’s exports to the European Union is expected to follow the same trajectory as seen in the first half of 2025, with exports to the EU in Q2 growing by 13% year on year,” the port operator said.

Should the double-digit growth in volume materialize, the combined volume arriving in North Europe in August and September will top 2 million TEUs.

“In terms of seasonality, July is typically the month wherein the most cargo is loaded from Far East to Europe, which means arrival into European ports in August and September,” Lars Jensen, CEO of Vespucci Maritime and a Journal of Commerce analyst, wrote in a LinkedIn post this week.

“The lack of progress in removing port congestion in Europe is worrying seen in the light of this coming peak load of cargo,” Jensen added.

North Europe’s gateway terminals have been struggling to get on top of often severe congestion for much of the year, with ships arriving outside scheduled windows causing berthing delays and full container yards delaying the offloading of cargo.

Terminals heading for ‘code red’ summer

Stefan Verberckmoes, senior shipping analyst at Alphaliner, said he was not optimistic that congestion would improve over the summer months, which was shaping up to be a “hot summer with code red for European container terminals.”

Verberckmoes said most of the ports in North Europe that had reserve capacity were now fully operational, with the main problem at terminals being the long dwell times caused by late vessel arrivals.

“The fact that some carriers compete by granting longer free time [for containers] of course only makes the problem of the terminal operators worse,” he said.

A spokesperson for Hapag-Lloyd said none of its hub terminals in Europe were congested at the moment but acknowledged there could be knock-on effects in the coming months.

Still, Destine Ozuygur, chief analyst at ocean visibility provider eeSea, said she did not see an imminent congestion crisis across North Europe and emphasized that not all terminals were affected.

“London Gateway has been the most extreme, followed by Antwerp, then Hamburg and then Rotterdam,” Ozuygur told the Journal of Commerce.

“While vessels and services are being impacted, it hasn’t put turnover across Europe in a chokehold,” she added. “Even a port like Rotterdam that has seen stubborn congestion is reporting healthy throughput in Q2 and has seen steady reliability improvement since January.”

Ozuygur outlined the factors contributing to the persistent congestion in North Europe for much of the year. Ongoing vessel diversions around southern Africa have necessitated the deployment of larger-capacity vessels, she noted, which leads to longer berth stays and higher yard utilization. The longer transit times have also left room for more volatility and unpredictable delays.

Schedule reliability data from eeSea, in which ships are considered late if they arrive one calendar day or more after the scheduled time, shows Asia-North Europe on-time performance falling from 42% in May to 29% in July.

On the land side, Ozuygur said some ports, such as Antwerp and Hamburg, are impacted by both high yard density and major barge delays. One of the major causes of the barge delays has been low water levels in European waterways that cause capacity restrictions.

Details please refer to the JOC news.

Source: JOC

 

The Gemini Cooperation is adding three new calls on a joint Asia-Europe container service as port congestion in Northern Europe challenges the hub-and-spoke model championed by the shipping alliance.

Gemini partners Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will change port rotations for their respective AE5 and NE4 services from Asia to “address fluctuating port congestion in Europe and ensure more consistent delivery,” Hapag-Lloyd said in an advisory Tuesday.

The original European rotation of the AE5/NE4 only included London Gateway and Germany’s Bremerhaven and Hamburg ports. Along with those existing calls, the services from September will make added stops at Aarhus in Denmark, Gothenburg in Sweden and Rotterdam in the Netherlands as their last three European calls.

Aarhus and Gothenburg had been previously served by Gemini using a shuttle service for transshipping from Bremerhaven.

The changes announced Tuesday include the AE5/NE4 services calling Hamburg before Bremerhaven.

While the Gemini partners have insisted their hub-and-spoke network could maintain reliable schedules and avoid blank sailings, Maersk said in a separate advisory Tuesday it was just as easy to unwind the network “to address challenges, predicted or not.” It added that the shuttle vessels serving Aarhus will be redeployed to “locations with an increased disruption risk to our customers’ business.”

Since April, Europe has experienced bouts of port congestion because of strong import demand, changes in container alliance structures and poor schedule reliability due to the ongoing longer transits around southern Africa. Other ocean carriers have had to switch their European port rotations to mitigate delays.

Busy spring at Hamburg

Hamburg, one of the harder-hit ports, saw an uptick in ship calls and vessel sizes through spring, according to data from Sea-web, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global. During April, 416 container ships called the port, Sea-web data shows, with total vessel capacity reaching 1.83 million TEUs, the highest in 12 months. In May, 421 container ships called Hamburg, totaling 1.8 million TEUs in capacity.

Details please refer to the JOC news.

Source: JOC

 

One month after a four-day strike by customs workers at Mexico’s Port of Manzanillo, cargo operations at the country’s busiest container gateway have yet to show any noticeable improvement, stakeholders say.

Despite ongoing efforts to clear out logjams triggered by the brief strike, berth waiting times for arriving vessels at Manzanillo have risen to their highest this year — 1.8 days, according to data from maritime visibility provider Vizion and data and analytics company Dun & Bradstreet.

Terminal operators had previously said they expected the congestion to clear by early June, but extended weekend hours at the port and an increase in customs personnel have not yet had an impact on the delays.

Carlos Tamayo, director of logistics in Mexico for logistics provider C.H. Robinson, told the Journal of Commerce that customers have seen delays of up to two weeks due to the congestion.

“Container throughput [at Manzanillo] has decreased by approximately 50% as a result of extended wait times for entering and exiting the port,” Tamayo said. “For freight that hasn’t shipped yet, we’re advising customers to move up bookings by at least three to four weeks and consider alternate ports like Lázaro Cárdenas.”

Shippers who use Manzanillo might face additional costs if they don’t meet their scheduled gate-out window due to congestion.

Details please refer to the JOC news.

Source: JOC

Ocean shipping rates from Asia to Europe shot up ahead of this week’s June 1 freight-all-kinds (FAK) increases by carriers, with the substantial price hikes supported by mounting delays at severely congested port hubs at both ends of the trade lane.

While port bottlenecks absorb capacity on Asia-Europe, surging demand on the trans-Pacific is prompting carriers to shift vessels to the booming China-US trade lane, putting further upward pressure on Asia-Europe rates.

“Carriers are redeploying ships from Asia-Europe and other routes to the trans-Pacific routes, with the capacity in Asia-Europe dropping 17% in the week starting June 16 vs. the end of May,” HSBC noted in its weekly transportation update.

“However, we think these are insufficient to address the cargo rush [on the trans-Pacific], while capacity reallocation could cause shortages in other corridors,” according to the bank’s analysts.

Drewry highlighted in a recent market update that since late March, labor shortages and low Rhine River water levels have pushed up berth waiting times by 37% in Antwerp, 49% in Hamburg and 77% in Bremerhaven.

In Asia, Shanghai and Singapore, the world’s busiest and second-busiest ports, respectively, are battling congestion driven by a rush of exports to the US during a 90-day tariff cooldown.

Rate hikes, surcharges

As capacity tightens, carriers are rolling out significant rate increases from Asia to both North Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as implementing “peak season surcharges” on some Mediterranean routes.

Source: JOC

Singapore has joined Shanghai, the world’s second-busiest and busiest ports, respectively, in facing congestion driven by a rush of exports to the US during a 90-day tariff cooldown, according to forwarder and carrier sources.

Operations in Singapore have been “heavily disrupted,” with transshipment cargo delayed by up to two weeks, forwarder Kuehne + Nagel said in an update Wednesday on its SeaExplorer visibility platform. According to a Monday update from container carrier Hapag-Lloyd, ships are waiting up to three days to berth at Singapore’s primary terminals due to vessel bunching and congestion.

That Singapore is the world’s largest transshipment hub makes it convenient for carriers to transship cargo as they redeploy vessels from European and other long-haul trades to US-focused services. Congestion at other Asian ports is also contributing to a backlog of ships in Singapore.

 

Shanghai congestion worsens

The situation has also deteriorated in Shanghai, with carriers reporting wait times of up to five days, compared with about three days last week, according to K+N.

The largest global forwarder said shippers are diverting cargo away from Shanghai to Ningbo to avoid delays, slowing operations in Ningbo. Similarly, congestion has worsened at Port Klang, Malaysia’s gateway terminal complex, with “heavily disrupted operations” and vessel wait times of up to three days, K+N said in its SeaExplorer update.

And in South Asia, the ports of Colombo, Sri Lanka; Mundra, India; and Chittagong, Bangladesh, “are also seeing increased waiting times at the moment,” Hua Joo said.

Vessel schedules from Ocean Network Express (ONE) this week provide an example of how the additional pressures in Singapore and Port Klang are impacting network fluidity. ONE’s 3,000-TEU Wan Hai 331, deployed on its Japan-Straits-Malaysia service, was four days late departing Hong Kong last Friday, but berthing delays in Singapore and Port Klang have increased these delays to eight days, with the ship scheduled to arrive in Singapore on June 3.

Schedules for June and July indicate ONE has lengthened the estimated time of arrival from four days to up to seven days from Hong Kong to Singapore for a raft of vessels operating on intra-Asia and Europe-Mediterranean services to account for berthing delays in Singapore.

Other ports in Asia, including Tianjin, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Nansha and Hong Kong in China; Busan, South Korea; Yokohama, Japan; Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam; and Manila, Philippines, are also dealing with declining port performance, K+N said.

The number of vessels waiting at key ports in Asia has been trending upward again in the last two weeks after plunging from a high at the start of May, according to Portcast’s ship tracking index. There were 62 ships waiting to berth at Shanghai on Wednesday, approximately double the number in mid-May. The vessel backlog outside Singapore hit 55 on May 14, before plunging as low as 23 on May 21, Portcast data shows.

Attention turns to US West Coast

During Evergreen Marine’s annual general meeting Thursday, chairman Chang Yen-yi said port congestion would spread to US West Coast ports next month as vessels from Asia, including extra capacity that carriers are deploying during the current tariff pause, start arriving at Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Similar to during the pandemic, the sharpest limits to capacity during an import surge will be outside the truck gates, not at the marine terminals. As containers exit the ports, the influx of international intermodal shipments will test rail car supply, and importers and consignees could face less availability of warehousing and chassis.

Source: JOC