14 Jul Severe congestion at Port of Singapore
Increasing wait times for berths at Singapore, as well as omitting the port in the face of a worsening logjam at Southeast Asia’s leading gateway, has seen the Port of Singapore reach a critical level of congestion and mass delays.
This cascading of disruption, caused by ongoing Red Sea vessel diversions, has seen container volumes at Southeast Asia’s leading container gateway surge 8.8% to 13.4 million TEUs in the first four months of 2024 when compared to the same period last year.
Current waiting times for vessels to berth have reached an extensive period of a minimum of four to nine days on average, which has seen ships omitting calls to Singapore and upending schedules at downstream ports, resulting in transhipment delays of 3-4 weeks, with this anticipated to further increase over the coming months.
Furthermore, vessels are facing substantially decreased vessel schedule reliability and longer dwell times as shipping companies discharge more containers per trip as they strive to omit subsequent journeys in a bid to recoup the time lost due to Red Sea diversions.
In an attempt to better manage these challenging conditions, Singapore terminal operators have initiated the reactivation of closed berths and container yards to help increase cargo handling capacity, which has increased its weekly capacity to 820,000 TEUs from 770,000 TEUs.
Whilst most recent data indicates a slight improvement in conditions, as the number of delayed vessels decreased from 450,000TEU at the end of May to 380,000TEU in the first week of June, there is still a long road to recovery ahead.
Across other locations, Port Klang and Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia are experiencing delays and congestion, whilst waiting times have risen across all main Chinese port regions, with Shanghai and Qingdao experiencing the longest delays, with these conditions anticipated to worsen due to the compounding delays and congestion at Singapore.
The team at Transolve Global are closely monitoring this ongoing situation to help ensure shipments have as close to zero or minimal impact as possible. If you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact your local Transolve representative.
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