Growing port congestion in China and United States

The health of the global supply chains in the next few weeks may partly hinge on the vitality of the trucking sector in a key port near Shanghai. A suspension of trucking services in several parts of China’s Zhejiang province has slowed the transportation of manufactured goods and commodities through one of the world’s most important ports.

There are strict controls on lorries moving goods to or from the Beilun district in Ningbo after the discovery of several cases of Covid-19 in the area, shipping line Maersk said in a recent customer advisory.

This suspension, along with restrictions on truckers in some areas in and around Zhejiang, has halted operations at some yards and warehouses at Ningbo port.

Ports around the world have been struggling to ease congestion as the pandemic heads into a third year. Ningbo is one of the world’s top container gateways and a crucial part of supply chains that connect factories in East China to consumers of automobiles, machines, electronics and toys in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. 

A week’s delay of trade at Ningbo’s port could cost US$4 billion including exports of circuit boards and clothes, according to consultant Russell Group. Some polyester factories in Ningbo have stopped work because they can’t receive raw materials via truck or ship out goods, according to analysts at Wood Mackenzie. Road deliveries of liquefied natural gas, an important fuel for industries unconnected to pipelines has also slowed.

The port was partly shut for weeks last August after a Covid-19 outbreak, causing a slowdown in exports, disruptions and congestion across supply lines.

United States

The Port of New York and New Jersey has largely handled the pandemic-driven jump in imported goods without significant shipping bottlenecks forming. But recently a queue of container vessels waiting to offload has started to form off the coast of Long Island. 

The culprit, the Omicron variant, is keeping hundreds of longshoremen out of work each day because of either illness or the need to quarantine after coming in close contact with an infected person. “We have seen a spike in the number of labour going out into quarantine,” Port of New York and New Jersey Authority Director Sam Ruda, told Bloomberg in an interview.

According to the port authority’s website average waiting time for containerships at the port had increased to 4.75 days in the last week of 2021 as compared 1.6 days as an average for the year. The number of longshoremen unavailable for work was reported to be running at about 350 per day. As of January 07, 2022 the port authority said 11 containerships were currently at anchor waiting to call its terminals. Two of the vessels had been waiting since January 01, 2022.

The port has a seen a significant growth in volumes over the pre-pandemic year of 2019 with in handling 8.12 million teu by the end of November 2021, as compared to 7.47 million teu for the whole of 2019. As compared to US west coast gateway ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the east coast port was largely unaffected by delays and congestion last year. In addition to Covid related worker quarantines last week the port also saw disruption to operations from heavy snow storms.