With sustained consumer demand, The Northwest Seaport Alliance’s latest Gateway Performance and Outlook forecasts another 4 weeks of strong container volumes, especially with the upcoming July 4 holiday slowdown. Then, there’s the industry’s ongoing struggle with ocean carrier scheduling reliability.
According to Supply Chain Dive, global schedule reliability dropped down from 39.1% in April to 38.8% in May of this year, marking a drastic YoY decrease from 74.8% in May 2020. Despite record-low scheduling reliability levels, Transpacific shipping rates to the U.S. West Coast are reaching upwards of $25,000 based on The Loadstar’s data.
Now that the Port of Yantian is back in full swing it’s looking like it’ll take at least a month for the Shenzhen region to clear the backlog of shipments that resulted from the area’s recent COVID-19 outbreak. In other news, the IMO may be running out of time to identify and address ways to decarbonize shipping.
To find out more about the challenges related to achieving zero emissions by 2050, or to read up on any of the week’s other top stories in international shipping, check out the following article highlights: