North Europe’s container port hubs are extremely congested ahead of the anticipated influx of import containers following Shanghai’s reopening and the looming peak season.
High stacks of empty containers and hundreds of export boxes had built up at major North European hubs as carriers blanked a third of their advertised sailings during the recent two-month Shanghai lockdowns. The ports have also used a lot of their off-dock overflow capacity for the long-term storage of thousands of customs-blocked Russia-destined containers.
Commenting about congestion at Hamburg, an industry contact told supply chain portal, The Loadstar, that the port was “sitting on an enormous pile of export containers”.
“German industry still works to a seven-day schedule, but vessels are arriving every nine to 12 days. That equates to a missing sailing every four to five weeks, and terminals are overflowing.”
He said warehouses and storage areas in and around the city were also congested.
Maersk advised in a recent market update that its networks were “under severe pressure”, which it blamed on “disrupted operations in European ports”.
“Our vessels are incurring delays in North Europe, which affect the schedule back to Asia Pacific,” said the carrier.
Maersk noted that terminals at Rotterdam and Bremerhaven were the most severely congested, causing extensive berth waiting times and slow ship-working productivity.
Hapag-Lloyd said yard occupancy at Hamburg’s Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) was 90%, “mainly caused by the discharge of import heavy vessels and reduced import pick-up rates”.
“Due to the high yard utilisation, reefer slots are being used as storage for dry boxes, in return limiting the maximum amount of reefer plugs available,” Hapag-Lloyd said.
At PSA’s Antwerp terminal, Hapag-Lloyd said yard capacity was now 90% at 869 berth and reefer plug utilisation at 913 berth was 100%, with reefer containers stacked three high.
Hapag-Lloyd said it was experiencing similar congestion at Rotterdam World Gateway, where yard density had deteriorated to 95%, due to “increasing container dwell times and Russian cargo from various carriers”, while it advised that, at ECT, the density level had increased to 96% as a result of “long dwell times of transhipment and import cargo blocking slots”.
It was noted that severe congestion impacting the Benelux hubs was very bad news for barge operators, with Antwerp apparently stopping all barge operations until June 30.
