Asia Pacific

As mentioned above, empty containers being tied up in foreign ports is a big issue currently facing many ASPAC ports. However, in addition to this, the demand for trans-pacific imports to Asia has also continued to drop. With a global slump in demand for goods and a shift towards services, many manufacturers in the region have begun slashing their orders for imported raw materials in order to compensate for what will likely be a less active fall and winter shopping season. This trend of less consumer spending on goods could affect other areas of the world as well, however, dealing with the existing and backlogged demand will still be a process that could take weeks or months.

North America

Here in North America, we’ve seen container congestion both at ports and on the rail. As we’ve mentioned in our newsletter for the last few weeks, rail service across Canada still continues to be affected by a lack of available equipment and long pickup waiting times. These factors have increased costs and had downstream effects leading to longer delivery times.

South of the border the problems with container availability and delivery stem mostly from the seaports. At the Port of Oakland for example, dwell times have gotten so bad that the port slashed its free dwell time from seven to four days. In a similar situation, the United States’ busiest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach are both seeing an increase in containers sitting in the port for extended periods of time. Since February, the number of containers that have dwelled in the ports for nine days or more has doubled to an astounding 48,000 containers.

The resurging number of containers sitting in the port has led many to believe that the port authority may finally make good on its promise to impose $100 a day fees for waiting containers. The fees were initially announced in October of last year and have been delayed every week due to supposed progress in reducing backlogs. It seems that the mere threat of the fee is no longer enough to motivate shippers and logistics providers and it may soon be time to go through with the fee.

What’s next?

Though they are still causing delays, many of the issues mentioned above are likely smaller blips on the global container shipping market / global shipping crisis 2022. Backlogs at ports and labor disputes have become somewhat of a normalized feature of the market since COVID first took its toll in 2020. AS we move forward, we’re likely to see a much slower busy season due to lessened consumer demand, which will hopefully allow the market some time and capacity to sort out the residual issues of the last few years. Whether we will see rates and transit times return to their pre-COVID levels is another story.