More than 50% of vessels at Asia’s busiest container ports are now arriving late, as typhoons and cascading supply chain disruption push schedule reliability to its worst levels outside the pandemic era.
All 14 of Asia’s busiest container ports have seen on-time arrivals decline, according to analyst Sea-Intelligence. Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan, the world’s two largest container ports, have been hit by consecutive typhoons this year, most recently Typhoon Saudel. Ningbo’s reliability fell 20.1 percentage points to 34.6% in July, while Shanghai dropped 19.2 points to just 21% on-time arrivals. “Outside of extreme pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, schedule reliability in Shanghai has never dropped this low in 14 years of recorded data,” said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
Murphy warned the backlog “will naturally cascade through the maritime network,” likely triggering a new wave of delays on head-haul trade lanes in the coming months. The disruption is also prompting some carriers to end their two-and-a-half-year rerouting of Asia-Europe services via the Cape of Good Hope, returning to the Suez Canal and Red Sea despite ongoing Houthi security threats to Saudi Arabian ports.
IAM Member Impact: Members with shipments transiting Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian, or other major Asian hubs should build in extended buffer time for the coming months, as delays are expected to ripple into head-haul schedules.
Source: Seatrade Maritime