Chinese ports work to secure global supply chain despite lingering snags

Chinese ports, especially those located in the Yangtze River Delta, are staying resilient in operations to ensure the stability of the global supply chain while easing logistics disruptions caused by regional epidemic prevention needs.

Despite lingering challenges due to the severity of COVID- 19 flare- up, progress has been made in the supply chain sector after the government smoothed traffic and helped business resumption for both domestic and overseas markets.

Industry experts said the recovery of the supply chain can be expected in mid- to- late May.

Data from the Ministry of Transport on Tuesday showed that there were 7.196 million trucks on and off expressways nationwide, a month- on- month increase of 7.72 percent as China's freight logistics continued to maintain a recovery trend.

With road traffic, the hinge of the overall supply chain, picking up, ports operations are also slowly recovering.

China's major ports handled 725,000 standard containers worth of goods on Monday, down 0.1 percent from the previous month.

Industry representatives said that the overall supply chain is easing, which is reflected in the resilience of Shanghai port, the world's largest container port by throughput.

In a statement that international shipping conglomerate Maersk sent to the Global Times on Tuesday, the company said that “we have seen an improvement in pickups for both export empty containers and import- laden ones. We have resumed the booking acceptance of Dangerous Cargo enabled by terminals having managed to release more space for reefers and DG Cargo by optimizing internal layouts.”

Earlier this month, several large shipping companies including Maersk announced that dangerous goods and refrigerated containers would not be unloaded, due to the high utilization rate of some storage yards in the Shanghai port, reminding customers to change their destinations.

“Local authorities are well aware of the landside bottlenecks caused by the situation and have urged all possible efforts to keep the supply chain moving and minimize the impact,” Maersk said.

In diverting the pressure from Shanghai port while securing trade flows, other neighboring cities with ports are playing an increasingly key roles.