Port Congestion Starts Taking Its Toll

The recent decline in the schedule reliability of carriers has been a key contributor to port congestion: on time port calls for all carriers on the Asia-Europe lane have dropped from a high of 83% in mid-2012 to just 51% during January-March this year, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants.

The major cause of declining reliability has been attributed to vessel sharing alliances, resulting in shuffling of vessels around networks.

Cancelling of port calls has become a preferred option for shippers to cope with the congestion.

The latest example of port omission due to congestion is the vessel NYK Venus.

Due to severe delays on its westbound voyage to North Europe, as well as port congestions in Europe, Hapag-Lloyd has decided to change the itinerary of the vessel on its outbound voyage to the Far East in order to come back to the usual schedule integrity.

The change to the itinerary leads to an omission of the port of Hong Kong.

Containers destined to Hong Kong will be loaded on “APL Le Havre” with ETA Hong Kong August 19, 2014, according to Hapag-Lloyd.

World Maritime News Staff