In mid-September the Port of Felixstowe sent an e-letter to its customers telling them they had to move imports out of the port as the yard was 80% full and it could no longer manage the stacks properly. According to the port users’ association, average dwell times had doubled from five to 10 days – worse than the “peak” of the last crisis in November last year – not least because the warehouses in the Golden Triangle in the East Midlands are also full. We reported this on line on 24 September and since then the situation has further deteriorated. There is a fuller report in the September 2021 edition of WorldCargo News. 

Factors in the current “perfect storm” are the post-lockdown ’V’-shaped recovery sending demand soaring (reflected in bigger call sizes – at Felixstowe the average number of quay exchanges went up by 18% to 2,950 in H1 2021 compared to H1 2019*), ever more unreliable carrier schedules leading to extenuated berth waiting times and “bunching,” lack of transparency in the information chain, Covid-19 precautions in the port (eg cleaning cabs and work stations at shift changes) and truck driver shortages. The latter factor has been magnified by anti-Brexit media, apparently oblivious to the fact that driver shortages are a long-standing Europe-wide problem and the simple fact that the main container ports handle deepsea trades. This is not to deny the fact that there are ongoing post-Brexit supply chain issues in Great Britain-EU trades, but they should not be confused with the problems at these deepsea ports, of which driver shortages are but one. 

Yesterday and today national media have been reporting that Maersk is now diverting calls from Felixstowe. For sure, the UK’s biggest port is up there with Los Angeles and Long Beach in the congestion stakes right now and the situation will not improve until well into next year. London Gateway and Southampton are facing similar problems, so carriers are dropping UK-bound containers at North Continent ports and feedering them to smaller UK ports, of which there are plenty around the coast and these are working normally anyway, although truck driver shortages are an issue for everybody. These ports are also the conduit for returning ECs to the Far East, via Continental gateways. If you can’t get anything inbound from a gateway, you can’t get anything outbound either.

There is nothing new in any of this, except it’s worse than before. There is only so much intermodal rail services can do to alleviate the situation as freight train path and terminal capacities are limited.

In an effort to restore some balance to the sensationalist shortage stories being promulgated by British media, the British International Freight Association (BIFA) is trying to introduce a sense of perspective.

Robert Keen, BIFA’s Director General, said today (14 October): “Many products that consumers are beginning to fear will be absent from shop shelves could well have been shipped and received by retailers already. If we see normal purchasing patterns, we should also see that most of what consumers are seeking will be available to purchase.

“We need to remember that more TEU were shipped successfully in August 2021 than in August 2019 before the pandemic. There is plenty of cargo being moved around. Are there major operational challenges, currently? Yes, of course, but our members and freight forwarders across the world are moving hell and high water to address them and doing their part to ensure that the forthcoming holiday season will go ahead as well as possible.”

Whilst BIFA accepts that moving boxes from the ports to destinations inland is one of the biggest issues facing retailers and the freight forwarders that serve them in the run up to Christmas, Keen hopes that as port congestion reduces, as it inevitably will, the headline writers will be equally vocal as backlogs are eased and containers are delivered.

Er…no chance, Robert.

* Sea-Intel