Problems expected at N.Y. & N.J. ports

The stuck container ship that halted global shipping traffic in the Suez Canal for nearly a week is expected to cause headaches at New York and New Jersey ports in the coming weeks.

But at least the problems won’t be nearly as bad as those caused by the pandemic last spring, a Port Authority official said Monday.

The blockage of one of the world’s most vital trade routes by the massive Ever Given — which began last Tuesday and ended Monday — caused 11 cargo ships bound for New York and New Jersey to be delayed by up to two weeks, said Beth Rooney, the Port Authority’s deputy director who oversees the agency’s six seaports where container ships dock.

Nearly half of the cargo that ends up in those ports travels through the Suez Canal. The fiasco means about 10% of the cargo shipped to the New York-New Jersey area will run behind schedule over the next month and result in higher than usual volume, Rooney said.

But that’s minimal compared to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on container shipping last spring, when manufacturing was temporarily halted in parts of the world. Between March and June 2020, 69 container ship voyages scheduled to arrive at Port Authority seaports were canceled, Rooney said.

“When manufacturing shut down across the globe for several months we saw empty shelves,” said Rooney. “In this case you’re talking about 10% of the monthly cargo that is going to be delayed by about 10 days.”

As shipping companies began to catch up last summer, Rooney said her team made sure they were prepared for the rush. The Port Authority worked with trucking companies to hire more people to help move cargo out of the ports more quickly, and alerted distributors about empty warehouse space where excess containers could be stored until they were ready to be picked up.

“Everything that was put in place for COVID continues to be useful,” Rooney said, adding that cargo has been coming into New York and New Jersey ports at a “fast and furious” pace — up 7% in February compared with the same month in 2019, a year before the pandemic hit, Port Authority data show.

Still, Rooney said the Port Authority — and global supply chains — were lucky that salvage teams, tugboats and rising tides were able to free the quarter-mile-long Ever Given from the banks of the Suez Canal, a narrow 120-mile waterway in Egypt connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.

Some container ships bound for New York and New Jersey rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa instead of waiting for the Suez to open again.

Those ships will end up arriving in New York waters even later than the ones that waited for the Ever Given to be freed, Rooney said. Had it taken weeks for the ship to be refloated — as some experts speculated last week — it could have been devastating to the U.S. economy.

“It could have affected everything you can imagine,” said Rooney. “About 95% of consumer goods in the U.S. arrive via a ship outside the country.”

‘You’re talking about 10% of the monthly cargo that is going to be delayed by about 10 days.’ PORT AUTHORITY’S BETH ROONEY