COMMENT: The ongoing influx of ultra large container carriers has led to a new phase of port congestion in Europe and Asia, writes Mike Mundy.

Large scale: the arrival of mega ships has put European and Asian ports under pressure: Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller. Credit: Walter Rademacher

Large scale: the arrival of mega ships has put European and Asian ports under pressure: Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller. Credit: Walter Rademacher

Some ports are simply not ready for them: new deepwater terminal capacity is not yet in place or interfacing land transport systems have not been properly configured. This situation has been further aggravated by a dramatic fall in liner schedule reliability in 2014 resulting in vessels arriving in port outside their allocated berthing window and thus adding to the log jam.

There has been and continues to be a big learning curve associated with handling the ultra large container carriers and this promises to remain in evidence as the number of these vessels increases – 21 this year and 54 in 2015. Overall, well over a 100 vessels of this type are on order over the near term with this number steadily increasing.

The relentless pursuit of lower slot costs also promises to see the current 19,000 teu vessel capacity limit broken very soon. Monaco-based Scorpio Group, known for its involvement in the wet and dry bulk markets, is understood to be planning 20,000 teu vessels and over the horizon from this are 24,000 teu ships.

All this suggests more emphasis on scaling up at major port gateways – 24,000 teu vessels imply vessel lengths of up to 450m. Terminals also have to have in place the handling power to process such vessels in an acceptable time window as well as accommodate the bigger peaks involved with moving containers to and from landside transport systems, road and rail.

Such challenges underpin the reduction of congestion problems. There are also timing issues – Rotterdam’s Maasvlakte 2 new APM Terminals’ facility is expected to start commercial operations three months later than forecast in February 2015. Similarly, while there has been no official word that the Rotterdam World Gateway terminal on the other side of the basin will miss its commercial start-up date of October there is a general expectation it will suffer a similar delay to the APM terminal.

It is, however, not just at the top end of the scale that this system scaling up is presenting challenges. The cascading down of relatively young vessels in the 12,000 teu-8,000 teu range will progressively have implications for medium to small size ports. The medium to small size container terminal has virtually vanished from the North European port range due to the combination of large vessels and bigger consortia. Expect this experience to be repeated elsewhere.