Time of container ships staying at ports increased by 11% in the first half of 2021

Vessels waiting at the port of Singapore

 
The Denmark-based company used data released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on the lengths of time container ships stay in port to see if it could shed some light on the current bottleneck issues that the container shipping industry is facing or not.

A quick calculation shows that the average length of time a container ship is in port in the first six months of 2021 is 11% higher than the average time in a port before the pandemic, for 2018-2019, according to analysts of Sea-Intelligence.

Compare this with global demand data released by Container Trade Statistics (CTS) - which is up 5.5% year-on-year - showing the efficiency of the port calls themselves declined in 2021.

Compared to other types of ships, the average time spent by container ships at the port has increased much more.

"Hence, to some degree, the container shipping sector is more impacted by the supply chain bottlenecks than other parts of shipping – which in all likelihood can be traced to the container shipping sector having a strong reliance on a land-side intermodal setup, which also suffers from severe bottlenecks presently", commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

Average length of time a container ship stays at ports in the US (Source: Sea-Intelligence, Sunday Spotlight, no. 53)

As Sea-Intelligence analysts point out, “Here we can see a 20% increase in the median time spent in port.” And Sea-Intelligence also explains, “We looked at the data for European ports and saw a very large increase in median port stays for both Germany and France, whereas Netherland, United Kingdom and Belgium see a change more in line with the global average. Spain has even seen a marginal decline in median port stay time."

Looking across the region of export ports, China recorded a 12% increase in the first half of 2021 compared to 2018-2019, which is basically in line with the global average increase in the first half of the year.

The Danish researchers note that when breaking down further across transshipment hubs, we saw a 20% increase in the port of Singapore.

Read more:

• A record of 56 container ships lined up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

• No signs of improving port congestion in the US, fearing that it will last until the end of 2022
• Sea-Intelligence: No sign of capacity reduction during Golden Week in China
• 41 container ships waiting to dock at the port of Los Angeles / Long Beach, freight rates continue to increase
   

Source: Phaata.com (According to Container-News)

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