As we were talking about this topic almost a month ago, here we are almost mid March and the port congestion on the West Coast of the US and Canada has not went down at all, and it looks like it’s still putting more pressure on everyone’s shoulders.
The buying patterns have changed in the past months and starting with last year when everything started with the pandemic and now that brought extreme consumer demands into North America. Together with the COVID outbreaks at local dock working forces and the container shortage created the extended crisis wave we’re feeling now.
If you’re tracking all the vessels that are now docked around and in the major ports on both coasts of the US and Canada you will see that there are more than 50 vessels waiting to get berth and unload their units. We’re looking at the 6 most congested ports now, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.
There are more than 30 ships anchored in San Pedro bay waiting at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach with the queue stretching over 12 miles along the coastline.
If you look up north on the map 12 ships are waiting on anchor at the Oakland port in San Francisco Bay.
If we take all 3 ports up north, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver they are all starting to look busy and we hope congestion is far away from happening, but even so there are 15 ships waiting for berth to open up at the Canada’s largest port, Vancouver.
If we take a look on the other coast, the congestion is overall farr less but there are still times with heavy traffic, most of them at the port of Savannah, 13 vessels were on the anchor this morning waiting to unload their units on land.
All ports authorities especially the ones on the West Coast LA and Long Beach are concerned that it would take a month or more to clear all ships at anchor not taking in consideration the ones still inbound from Asia. All liners are taking action to avoid the worst of the congestion and they are waiting for the second half of the year before any normality returns in the shipping container industry. They are talking about 3-4 months to work with these unexpected conditions and they hope the second half of this year would bring a more stabilized trade.
The crisis and congestion spread to Asia as well, Singapore reported a delay in the turnaround time for large vessels carrying shipping containers, from the normal 2 days waiting per ship to 5-7 days waiting per ship. Everyone is trying to fight the so called crisis which is bringing good money to the container manufacturers and vendors all around the world, which makes you think is this even real or artificially created and sustained for fast profit gain? We shall see in the next couple of months how the situation turns out to be.
Thank you marinetraffic.com for the information and maps
