Maritime supply chain continues to be characterized by massive disruptions and uncertainties

While congestion has been most evident in Chinese and US ports in recent months, Northern European ports are now also affected. As a result of the concentrated arrival of delayed container ships, all major Northern European seaports are experiencing seaborne and landside congestion. The capacities at the container terminals are geared to fast land/sea transshipment, i.e. a container usually stays at the terminal for two to three days. Currently, the dwell time has more than doubled, which, in combination with the simultaneous arrival of many container ships, has led to a resource utilization at the terminals which has a significant negative impact on productivity.

As a result of this development - in particular the dwell time of import containers has increased massively - individual terminal operators have already taken measures (e.g. delivery of new containers only if the same number is taken off again, outsourcing of containers with excessively long dwell times for a fee, delivery restrictions on export containers, etc.) to get the peak load halfway under control. Regardless of this, the wage dispute between ver.di and the Central Association of German Seaport Operators (ZDS) is also smouldering in the German seaports, which has just recently (July 14 to 16, 2022) led to another strike.

All of this demands maximum commitment from the employees in the freight forwarding companies in order to still be able to schedule the container transports despite all of the challenges. Forward-looking transport planning is hardly possible any more; instead, new challenges for one and the same container transport have to be met several times a day. An end to these global disruptions and imponderables is not in sight, at least not at present.

Of course, under these circumstances, we are making every effort to nevertheless maintain your supply chains and to carry out all transports as planned. Your support in scheduling very early helps us to do this.

Thank you very much!