May 2, 2022 – Many parts of Asia are currently on holiday this week but Chinese ports especially are under tremendous pressure due to the zero tolerance policy for covid. The largest issues remaining are the terminals handling capacity, lack of truck drivers and lack of truck availability due to the transport measures that have been enacted. This has caused a price hike in the cost for haulage and transports across many regions and has causes severe limitations for any haulage. Many suppliers are also negotiating with importers to change terms from FOB to EXW due to the hardship they are experiencing in trying to source trucking under FOB terms.

The city of Shanghai remains under lockdown and although reports are that the port terminals in Waigaoqiao and Yangshan are operating, there are stringent restrictions for any frontline port and terminal staff that are still in effect. These restrictions have greatly affected the ability for goods to be transported throughout Shanghai especially as some key highways usually used by truckers have also closed or have severely restricted access. This has greatly reduced the number of available truckers, equipment and transport options for exporters in Shanghai that are still able to produce. The situation has forced many trucks to be turned away from these surrounding provinces thus leaving large amounts of cargo stranded. The ongoing situation has forced carriers and carrier alliances to impact vessel services through implementation of additional blank sailings, restructuring of schedules, delays for departures and arrival and longer waiting times through all links of the supply chain. As such, we anticipate more delays for upcoming sailings as this will have substantial impact on ocean bookings throughout the region.

The obvious alternative routing is to ship via Ningbo but the situation in Ningbo continues to worsens with rising cases across the region. The situation in Shenzhen is faring only slightly better as there are still limitations for transport.

In Canada, we continue to experience some delays for west coast dwell times in Vancouver and Prince Rupert which is still about 2 weeks. The biggest factor appears to be when a vessel has docked and is offloaded, we are experiencing Terminal Delays (some more than others) in making the containers available for pick up as some are being put on block stow. Understandably, this can cause much frustration as to importers it can appear that vessel and containers have arrived but are still not available for pickup, delivery or furtherance by rail. In some instances, containers were not being made available for up to one month.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about your upcoming shipments.