Here’s what it looks like when an already unprecedented situation gets worse (photo courtesy of Marine Exchange of Southern California). The backlog of vessels at anchor or at drift outside the Ports of LA and Long Beach is continuing to increase.
From Freightwaves.com: “While the numbers fluctuate from day to day, there were 70 container ships in the queue on Monday with total capacity of 432,909 twenty-foot equivalent units. To put the enormity of that number in perspective, that’s more than the inbound container volume the Port of Long Beach handled in the entire month of August. It’s roughly what Charleston handles inbound in four months and what Savannah handles in two.”
Here is a view of that situation from marinetraffic.com:
In order to reduce unprecedented delays and better manage overwhelming port congestion, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are even going as far as to extend their operating hours at truck gates. This initiative comes at a time when the current queue of vessels waiting for a berth outside the Southern California ports has reached 73. And, as another view from marinetraffic.com illustrates, there are plenty more vessels on the way.
Given the limitations of surrounding ports, there’s no getting around it for shippers, according to The Wall Street Journal. All of this chaos, however, has served NVOs fairly well over the last 10 months since they now control 53.1%, or 6.8M TEU, of total eastbound trans-Pacific volume based on the latest figures from JOC.
With retailers stocking up ahead of the holiday season, industrial real estate markets near the nation’s top international gateways “are seeing more than 11% rent increases year-over-year,” according to Supply Chain Dive. Moreover, popular areas like LA and New Jersey are experiencing low vacancy rates as well. All these supply chain disruptions will be having an impact on retailers’ abilities to get products on shelves for the holiday season.
To learn more about this week’s top international shipping updates, check out the following article highlights:
