According to analysts Sea-Intelligence, container terminal congestion is getting worse as the industry moves into 2022.
Overall, 11.5% of the global capacity has been taken out of the market because of vessel delays in November 2021, marking a slight improvement from 12.3% in October 2021.
However, Sea-Intel notes that it seems that there is no sign of imminent improvement.
The normal state of affairs in the market is that 2% of global capacity is “trapped” in delays somewhere
It also clearly shows the sheer magnitude of the problem in 2021, which was a year where demand grew 7% year-on-year and at the same time capacity effectively was reduced by 11%.
In terms of terminal congestion, for North America, the slight improvement after Golden Week was fully reversed by the end of 2021 and a new record was set on December 30th, with a slight improvement again on January 6th, driven by improvements in Savannah and Charleston.
For Europe, the situation has been steadily getting worse since the start of October, with no signs of any improvement, or even levelling out.
This also implies that there might be a continued upwards push on freight rates on this trade, as the congestion is likely to have a negative impact on reliability, and hence in turn on available capacity
All the available data shows that congestion and bottleneck problems are worsening getting into 2022, and there is no indication of improvements as of yet
Sea-Intel concluded.