With all anchorages full, record amounts of vessels are waiting off San Pedro Bay, as there are 95 ships at anchor or drift areas.
These ships are waiting for berth space to open up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Of these vessels, 70 are containerships, while an interesting fact is that 37 ships have been forced to drift in the Pacific.
Speaking about the current extreme supply chain crunch last week as a keynote during London International Shipping Week, Søren Toft, the CEO of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), gave emphasis on the massive growth in US demand, citing a 33% increase in imports from Asia into the US in the first seven months of the year.
Supply chains are not built for such massive changes
Giving an update on operations last month, Gene Seroka, the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, mentioned that the challenge facing the entire supply chain amounts to “squeezing 10 lanes of freeway traffic into five lanes.”
