Shipping, Drayage and Intermodal Alerts for October 27, 2021
USA Port Updates
The ports seeing the heaviest congestion are Seattle/Vancouver, Los Angeles/Long Beach and Savannah. Vessel waiting times at Oakland have recently improved as transpacific services skipped the port calls, but those services have added to the vessel line-ups outside the remaining West Coast ports. In Southern California, terminals are piloting extended gate hours and will start to levy fees against ocean carriers in November for containers that do not get picked up for local-delivery or moved to rail after a specified time in effort to improve cargo flows. Read more detail in the US Port & Intermodal update report here.
Europe to North America
Transatlantic services to Savannah and Seattle have been modified due to the increase in congestion and vessel waiting times. For November schedules, Hapag-Lloyd will replace Savannah direct calls with Jacksonville and CMA-CGM will shift to Charleston. MSC will continue to call on Savannah port, but will increase its peak season surcharge (PSS) by an additional USD1,000 on November 1st, 2021.
Port calls from Europe to Seattle will also shift as The Alliance ocean carrier network (Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Yang Ming and Hyundai) will revise their AL5 service rotation to call at Vancouver, Oakland, and Los Angeles only. MSC has stopped accepting new bookings to Seattle due to the backlog of cargo at the trans-shipment port in Lazaro Cardenes (Mexico).
Oceania / New Zealand
Services from Australia and New Zealand have been severely disrupted from ongoing congestion and labor disruption at origin ports as well as from delays at US West Coast ports. Vessel schedules from Oceania only call the port of Oakland every second vessel (fortnightly) which has reduced capacity on the trade by 50% and contributed to backlogs and delays for bookings and equipment. Carriers have recently announced the return of weekly Oakland calls given the reduction in congestion there; however, the space capacity will not double but will be spread out over a weekly cycle due to the backlog of cargo of all commodities.
South America
Weather delays have significantly affected cargo flows out of San Antonio port where the vessel berthing windows are extremely short and vessels have more stringent weight limitations due to surf conditions. These delays impact services on European loops (due to Panama Canal window restrictions) and US West Coast routes (due to transshipment port congestion). Vessel schedule delays are also impacting the repositioning of 20′ equipment used for bulk wine cargo loadings and adding 2-3 week times to lead times.
Freight moving from Argentina to Chilean ports have additional seasonal delays from winter closures on the cross-Andes corridor, so prepare for even longer transit times.
South Africa
Export services from Cape Town (the natural port of loading for wine exports) are still seeing delays from equipment repositioning supply and terminal/vessel operation. Ocean services are still seeing residual delays in the area.
For more information on bookings for upcoming shipments, including alternative shipping ports or air freight options for urgent orders, please reach out to your Hillebrand representative for more information.