Logistics News | Port Congestion Shifts to US East Coast

Author Name: Tiffany Lee – Marketing Analyst at FreightAmigo｜16/8/2022

Market analysis by Xeneta, the leading ocean and air freight rate benchmarking and market analytics platform, stated that a continuous shift in container shipping capacity is happening from the Far East to the US. Port congestion issue is shifting to the East coast ports as there is an increasing throughput on the East and declining throughput on the West.

During pandemic, the port congestion on the West Coast has been worsened, and the global supply chain faced enormous challenges. According to Peter Sand, Chief Analyst of Xeneta, container ships had to wait for three weeks or longer for berth at Los Angeles and Long Beach during peak times. Carriers therefore shifted their capacity to the East Coast to avoid the congested West Coast. However, this strategy has caused port congestion shifts to the East Coast and affected its schedule reliability.

According to Sea-Intelligence, schedule reliability for record-high imports to the US East Coast dropped to 18.7% in June, less than one in five ships were arriving on time. The average delay was 9 days. Meanwhile port congestion on the West Coast has slowed down. Also, the schedule reliability has improved, reaching 24.8% in June. However, there were still three out of four ships arriving late, clocking to an average delay of 9.9 days.

According to Sand, capacity between the Far East and the US East Coast increased by 18.9% compared to the same period in 2021 with an average capacity of 210,000 TEU, which is equivalent of adding four 8,750 TEU ships a week.

Port congestion also resulted in empty containers accumulating in the port. Carl Bentzel, a Commissioner of the US Federal Maritime Commission, claimed that the empty containers issue is spreading to other ports on the East Coast, such as Port of Baltimore. He believed that carriers and marine terminals must evaluate their containers management to cope with the increasing throughput.

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