The Chittagong yard is full! Shippers seeking to clear the backlog of ships directly to the U.S./Europe

Due to congestion at the transshipment port and berthing delays in Chittagong, Bangladesh’s private inland container yard (ICD) was crowded with fully loaded export containers, which hindered the operation of its yard.

It is understood that the total capacity of 19 ICDs or offshore terminals can store 77,700 TEU, but when the number of stored containers reaches 85% of the capacity, operations are hindered.

At present, the ICD yard has 14,100TEU export containers, 8,500TEU import containers and 38,500TEU empty containers.

These ICDs handle almost 100% of the country’s exports and 25% of imports, and the co-storage of empty containers is almost ten times that of Chittagong’s empty container inventory.

The Bangladesh Inland Container Warehouse Association (BICDA) sent a letter to all relevant personnel on July 1, asking them not to store boxes in the container yard for more than three days to ensure the smooth operation of the facility.

Facing the long-standing export cargo transportation crisis, Bangladeshi cargo owners decided to persuade larger shipowners to provide direct service from Chittagong to US and European ports to meet the challenge.

The crisis was caused by the shrinking capacity of feeder ships, the congestion of regional transshipment ports and the delay of berthing at Chittagong Port, which resulted in the storage of more than 14,000 export-loaded containers in the inland container yard.

The leaders of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the country’s largest export group, held a meeting with the leaders of the Bangladesh Freight Forwarders Association (BFFA) to find a way out and jointly solve the obstacles facing the goods.

The two associations also decided to hold meetings with diplomats from the United States and Europe, the main export destinations, to seek help from buyer forums to influence shipping companies to deploy more ships on their routes, and to request the government to strengthen the state-owned Bangladesh Shipping Company to launch Long-distance and feeder ships.

Rakibul Alam Chowdhury, vice president of BGMEA, believes that if direct services from Chittagong to the United States and Europe are not opened, there is no other way to solve the current crisis. He said, “Ships with a draft of 9 to 10 meters can be deployed to avoid transshipment ports and transport export containers from Chittagong.”

Chowdhury added that the situation in Singapore, Colombo and Port Klang is getting worse every day, so there is uncertainty about the clearance of the export backlog in Chittagong.

He stated that BGMEA will work with Junior Shipping Minister Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury on July 6 to seek government-level intervention to immediately resolve the crisis.

"Otherwise, we will have to stop production because now we don't have enough space to store the goods and the ICD is full. The trucks are there waiting for up to five days to unload," he commented and continued to point out, "This also increases transportation. Cost, but also caused a shortage of trucks to transport imported containers from the port."

At the same time, with the massive handling of import and export containers in June, Chittagong Port's container throughput reached 3.09 million TEUs in the 2020-21 fiscal year ending June 30, a year-on-year increase of 3.1%.

Among them, in June, the port handled 63,770TEU of exported cargo containers, 119,692TEU of imported cargo containers, and 61,179TEU of empty containers.