The nearly 100 ships that wait on the horizon to berth in the Hong Kong and Shenzhen container ports are the latest sign of the problems that have snarled global supply chains, pushed up consumer prices in Europe and the US, and led to shortages of goods from Christmas toys to furniture.
The backlog on southern China is currently the world s worst. A typhoon opened the ports for two days this week. However, although weather often disrupts shipping, this added to the problems from previous jams since the pandemic began. In August, a single case of Covid paralysed a terminal for a fortnight in the largest Chinese port of Ningbo, outside Shanghai.
Globally, there are now 584 container ships stuck in ports, almost double the number at the start of the year according to real-time data from Kuehne Nagel, one of the world's largest freight forwarders.
Supply chains have been broken down from all angles and were hit at an unprecedented level, said Simon Heaney, an analyst at maritime consultancy Drewry. The problems are much more deep-seated than what you see on the ports. Increased demand for consumer products, Covid-induced disruption to container ship schedules, and a shortage of port workers and truck drivers combined to extended waiting times at ports in the US.
Adding to the problem is that when ships arrive earlier than expected, cargo operations and turn-around schedules are knocked out of sequence, causing a ripple effect on freight, truck and warehouse services.
The snarl-ups in supply chains are reflected in a surge of shipping costs: the average global price of shipping a 40 foot container is now close to $10,000, three times higher than at the beginning of 2021 and almost 10 times pre-pandemic levels, according to Freightos.
Others believe that the crisis could last longer — especially if weather is bad or there are more coronavirus outbreaks in China, given its zero-covid policy.
A normal cold winter period will bring a return to the northern hemisphere with snow, wind and closures of terminals What then we don t know what will happen, said Lars Mikael Jensen, head of the global ocean network at Maersk. I can t judge if we're over the worst. In Europe, there are long waits for ships outside of Hamburg and Antwerp. Even when vessel can still have huge disruptions - as at Feverdam port in the Netherlands and at Rotterdam in the UK, where shortage of truck drivers and clogged inland waterways slowed the onward movement of cargoes.
A similar pattern is even true for ports on the coast of the US. Although the number of ships waiting at sea has decreased from a record 76 in September to now 57, shortages of port workers and truckers means it takes up to 12 days for ships to drop anchor and unload containers, delaying delivery of everything from sneakers to tropical fruits and Lego.
That is why it takes three times longer compared with pre-pandemic times to clear vessels at Los Angeles and Long Beach. In contrast at large Chinese ports, which work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it only takes 20 per cent longer, according to IHS Markit s port performance program, an industry data set.
The problem is so severe that US President Joe Biden has been pushing rail freight companies, trucking groups and ports to increase their capacity. Several major businesses including Walmart and UPS have meanwhile pledged to step up their efforts to move goods.
But even when problems start to ease, Lars Jensen, a container shipping analyst at Vespucci Maritime, said that port bottlenecks will still come in fits and starts everywhere, as delayed vessels try to dock all at once.
Nobody should expect this to be a smooth transition, he said. You are going to have these back and forth ripples that will take a while to get out of the system.