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409 container ships! 2.7 million containers are waiting to be unloaded outside the port! Meishan Wharf plans to reopen next week?

409 container ships! 2.7 million containers are waiting to be unloaded outside the port! Meishan Wharf plans to reopen next week?

MIKEY sofreight.com 2021-08-21 17:16:26

At present, the world's largest container ports are under heavy traffic pressure, with 2.7 million 20-foot-tall containers waiting to be unloaded outside the ports. VesselsValue's analysis shows that some ships have been waiting for 18 days.

Facts may prove that it is difficult for the United States and many other countries to reserve enough retail merchandise for the upcoming Black Friday and Christmas shopping boom. As the global supply chain is under tremendous pressure, there are currently 2.7 million 20-foot containers berthed outside some of the largest container ports in the world.

According to VesselsValue's latest analysis report, more specifically, 409 container ships loaded with 2,732,133 20-foot containers are currently waiting outside the port for unloading. These millions of containers are filled with retail and industrial goods.


In the past nine days, the closure of Meishan Terminal has exacerbated the chaos in the global supply chain. According to data from VesselsValue, as of August 18, a total of 80 container ships, totaling 393,650 teu, were waiting for loading and unloading at other terminals in Ningbo Port. One of the container ships has been in line for more than 9 days and is the container ship with the longest waiting time.

VesselsValue's analysis shows that in the Port of Long Beach, California, on the west coast of the United States, ship queuing and traffic bottlenecks are also serious. There are 33 container ships lined up outside the port, totaling 255,333 teu, and one of them has been waiting for unloading for more than 18 days.

According to a report yesterday by Souhang.com, the delays of the Asia-Northern Europe route are also very serious. The Asia-Northern Europe route, which was originally expected to have a round-trip transportation time of about 75 days, will now take 100 days or more. Among them, the waiting time for ships in the port of Antwerp Up to 10 days.

In addition, due to the long waiting time for ships in the Port of Hamburg, Maersk will adjust the AE7 service from Northern Europe to the Far East.


According to the announcement on Maersk’s official website, due to the high density of the Hamburg port and the extremely long waiting time of its ships in the Hamburg port, in order to improve the reliability of the AE7 service from Northern Europe to the Far East, the import berth can only be based on whether the berth in the Hamburg port is available. To determine and use Bremerhaven-NTB (Bremerhaven) as a backup emergency unloading port.

Maersk stated that the voyage schedule will be updated based on the confirmed import call one week before the ship arrives in Germany. The affected export goods that were originally unloaded at the Port of Hamburg will be transported through the Port of Bremerhaven and loaded onto the corresponding vessel/voyage.

The ships/voyages that may be affected are as follows:


Lars Jensen, shipping analyst at Vespucci Maritime, said that the instability of the global supply chain has both good news and bad news.

Jensen said that the good news is that the Meishan Wharf, which was closed on August 11, is scheduled to reopen next week, but the news about the reopening of the wharf has not yet been confirmed by officials and shipping companies.

It is reported that Meishan Wharf will be partially reopened on the 24th and fully open on September 1. It is expected that the entire port will resume normal operations in the middle of next month, and it will take 10 to 14 days to clear the backlog of container ships.

On the other hand, Jensen said that the bad news is that although other terminals in Ningbo Port can handle 77,000 teu (equivalent to 90% of the overall cargo volume) of container freight per day, delays and ship diversions caused by terminal closures will continue to affect others. Ports and cause congestion in the global supply chain.

The current situation resulting from the closure of Meishan Terminal will continue to pose challenges in the coming weeks. However, Jensen concluded that compared with the partial closure of Yantian Port earlier this year, the overall situation is not as bad as expected.


In addition, according to CCTV news, at a regular press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce on August 19, some media asked that Ningbo Zhoushan Port was partially closed due to the epidemic. Some people worried that this would aggravate the already tight international capacity. May I ask How does the Ministry of Commerce view this? What measures will the Ministry of Commerce take to ensure the stability of the global supply chain?

In this regard, the spokesperson Gao Feng introduced that after the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in Ningbo Zhoushan Port on August 11, the Meishan Port area was closed, and some import and export businesses were temporarily affected. The local government and relevant enterprises have quickly taken effective measures. District ships have been adjusted to other port areas to operate. At present, the overall operation of Ningbo Zhoushan Port is stable.

Gao Feng said that in the next step, the Ministry of Commerce will work with relevant departments to continue to strengthen the resilience and risk resistance of China’s foreign trade industry chain supply chain under the premise of preventing and controlling the epidemic. International cooperation, firmly safeguard the multilateral trading system, oppose trade protectionism, promote the stability and smooth flow of the international industrial chain supply chain and international logistics, and work together with all trading partners to jointly promote the recovery and development of the global economy.