A shortage of ships and empty containers leads to delays in world trade for weeks, leading to empty shelves. Forwarders are calling on shipping companies to quickly increase capacity.

'There are simply too few empty containers and too few ships in service to meet the current demand, 'said Ad Schoenmakers, chairman of the seaport logistics steering group at Fenex and director of forwarding company Ritra Cargo Holland BV. 'Products stand still in Asia for weeks. In a transhipment port in Colombo, Sri Lanka alone, 50.000 containers are ready to be shipped, but there are no ships to transport them. '

Delay
Earlier this year, when exports from Asia dropped dramatically due to the corona crisis, shipping companies took many ships out of service and scrapped departures. Although world trade is reviving, there is still insufficient capacity.

'If I wanted to ship a container from Shanghai to Rotterdam, I used to have a place on a ship within four days. Now that takes at least three weeks. This delay disrupts the entire logistics chain, because importers do not receive their goods on time and ultimately the consumer is faced with an empty shelf, 'says Schoenmakers.

Price increase

'In terms of volume, we are almost back to the level of 2019, while the capacity of the shipping companies seems to be inadequate', says Fenex chairman Roderick de la Houssaye. This also has an effect on the transport tariffs. 'Due to the shortage of sailings and empty containers, the prices of transport have increased enormously. You now pay four to five times as much as last year for the import of a container from China. This has a negative impact on international trade flows and slows down the economic recovery '.

Scaling up
CLECAT, the umbrella organization for European forwarders, has taken various initiatives to encourage shipping companies to deploy more capacity. The problem has also been raised with the European Commission. Transport en Logistiek Nederland reports this on them website through this press release.

"But the waiting times do not seem to be coming to an end for the time being," said De la Houssaye. 'Chinese New Year is at the beginning of February. The weeks before that are always extremely busy in shipping. That will cause even more delay, resulting in empty shelves. We must return to a reliable and predictable timetable as soon as possible and call on the shipping companies to scale up as quickly as possible. '

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