Port skipping

The report by MDS Transmodal (MDST) found that ports lost more than a third of their expected capacity to ship containers during 2021, creating delays, disruption and economic harm to some smaller developing nations.

“Skipped port calls have multiple effects on shippers,” said James Hookham, GSF Director. “They create local upward pressure on shipping rates, as shipping line agents ‘auction-off’ available slots on the vessels that do call.

“Shippers also face unexpected surcharges for the handling and storage of delayed containers. More pernicious is the wider effect on national economies, especially those of developing nations that lose opportunity to deliver their exports, and hinder the recovery of their economy from the effects of lockdowns and Covid restrictions.”

The ports of Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Piraeus (Greece) have been especially hard hit (see graph above), with about 40% of the expected container capacity failing to arrive in the last quarter of 2021, in comparison with a pre-Covid level of between 15-20%. In the European, Gulf and Indian Sub-continent region, Felixstowe (UK) and Jebel Ali (UAE) failed to see around a third of their expected capacity.

The picture (below) is similar Asia Pacific with Port Klang (Malaysia) suffering a 40% shortfall and Melbourne (Australia) and Tauranga (New Zealand) down by around a third of the expected container capacity during the second half of 2021.

Most of the expected vessels would have already been fully occupied by containers collected at ports called at earlier on the service. Indeed, the decision to skip a port is often taken because there is no space on board to take any more, or so few spare slots as to make the call uneconomic. The collapse in service levels at affected ports and the regions they serve is stark, amounting to far more than the inconvenience of having to wait for the next ship.

“Skipped ports and blanked sailings have evidently become central to the way shipping lines are managing the capacity of their heavily utilised fleets,” said James Hookham.

“As the pressures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic ease GSF will be monitoring the restoration of service predictability for shippers at these and other key global ports to ensure the benefits of service reliability and frequency promised by consortia and alliance operations are reinstated.”