Port congestion ties up 12% of container ship capacity

Port congestion is absorbing roughly 12% of the world's container vessel capacity. The figure is in the October market report from C.H. Robinson, the US logistics group, published on 1 October. On a weekly service that capacity goes missing as skipped weeks, dropped port calls and double sailings, and it returns when the queues clear.

The report does not say who measured the 12%. The closest published match is the congestion indicator from Linerlytica, the liner consultancy. In late August it counted 4.31 million TEU of ship capacity waiting to berth (Maritime Executive, 25 August). That was 12.6% of the fleet. The indicator is a snapshot, adding up the capacity of the ships waiting on the day of the count. So if that share held, the average ship would spend 12.6% of its time waiting.

Put that on one string with an 84-day round trip and twelve ships. There, 12.6% is between ten and eleven days at anchor per rotation. Part of that is routine, because the same indicator read 6.5% in November 2023, a month before the Red Sea diversions began. The gap is about six points, or roughly five extra days on this string.

A weekly service needs one ship for every seven days of round trip, so five more days means 12.7 ships to keep a sailing every week. Nobody can deploy 0.7 of a ship. There is also almost nothing spare to add, because idle capacity in the same August report was about 0.5% of the fleet.

So the string pays in one of three ways. The ship speeds up and burns the fuel. It drops a port call to buy the days back. Or it slides a week, which leaves one departure empty and puts two ships into a later one.

C.H. Robinson reports carriers skipping ports after the typhoons that hit China's main ports. Sea-Intelligence, the Copenhagen analyst, found twelve double sailings scheduled on Asia to North Europe across China's Golden Week holiday and the week after (23 September). No blank sailings were planned in either week.

The service still lists a weekly sailing. It delivers a gap one week and two ships the next.

The same arithmetic runs in reverse. When the waiting days come out of the round trip, the ships return to their proforma weeks. The capacity is back without anyone ordering or chartering a vessel.

That has started in China. Kuehne+Nagel's weekly port update put the seven-day average wait at Shanghai at 4.72 days in mid-September. In the week to 6 October it was 3.51 days. Sea-Intelligence already expects a sharp oversupply on Asia to North Europe once the delayed ships clear, with last-minute cancellations to follow.

Watch the blank sailing notices on Asia to North Europe after Golden Week. The starting point is none planned across the holiday and the week after. Voids announced late and at short notice would mean the 12% is coming back as capacity nobody planned for.