Congestion in European and American ports intensifies

Congestion in European and American ports intensifies

In a blink of an eye, it is already mid-August, which means that the peak shipping season is coming, and sellers should also prepare for the peak sales season in Europe and the United States in the second half of the year. However, this year's cross-border e-commerce market is not as good as last year, so the maritime situation should not be as popular as last year.

Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world's top five shipping companies, announced in the second quarter financial report that although the current global shipping demand has not fallen off a cliff, the slowdown is an indisputable fact. Continued as it continues to go down.

Although the current freight rate has fallen, it is still much higher than the level before the epidemic. According to statistics, the spot freight rate of containers from China to the western United States has been more than 4 times higher than that of the same period in 2019.

Since the beginning of this year, global consumer demand has declined. Taking the United States as an example, it has been affected by inflation, resulting in a decrease in consumer demand in the United States and a decline in the purchasing power of commodities.

According to the latest monthly Global Port Tracker report from the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Hackett Associates, the number of imported containers in the United States fell in June and the number of imported containers at major U.S. ports is expected to increase significantly in the coming months. decline.

Although the volume of container imports has decreased, the current situation of port congestion is still increasing.

Taking the Port of Long Beach in the United States as an example, it set a new record with a container handling volume of nearly 790,000 TEUs in July, an increase of 0.13% over the same period last year. Among them, the import container processing volume and the export container processing volume decreased by 1.8% and 0.5% respectively, about 380,000 TEUs and 110,000 TEUs. Empty container handling increased by 2.8% to about 300,000 TEUs.

As of July, the container handling capacity of the Port of Long Beach in the United States has exceeded 5.79 million TEUs this year, an increase of 4.6% year-on-year.

Although the number of import and export containers has dropped and the freight volume has decreased, due to the impact of the global strike wave, it is expected that the congestion in many major ports in Europe and the United States will not ease in the near future.

According to data from Hapag-Lloyd, compared with Q1 in 2022, the container shipping congestion index across the East Coast in the United States rose by 53% in Q2, and in Northern Europe by 26%. Although the West Coast of the United States fell by 14%, the congestion has not eased, but has continued to deteriorate, and is expected to become more serious in the near future.

To ease port congestion, the US ports of New York and New Jersey announced plans to introduce a quarterly "container imbalance fee" for carriers to ensure that carriers remove more containers than they unload. This charge will be calculated based on the carrier's ratio of the number of outbound containers to the number of inbound containers, not the dwell time.

This fee will be assessed quarterly from September 1, and the total outbound container volume of the carrier must be no less than 110% of the inbound container volume during the same period, otherwise the carrier will be charged a fee of $100 per container. Among them, the inbound and outbound containers include loaded and empty containers, excluding railway traffic.

According to Container XChange's "2022 Demurrage and Demurrage Benchmarks" report, the world's top 5 ports for container demurrage and demurrage are all located in the United States, namely New York Port, Long Beach Port, Los Angeles Port, Oakland Port and Savannah port. After 14 days, the average demurrage fee per TEU was over $2,000 and even as high as $3,182 in New York Harbor.

Shipping chaos, coupled with higher demurrage fees, strikes, congestion, etc., are frequent. Sellers need to pay attention to risks and choose carefully