Shanghai Port Grapples With Increasing Congestion
Shanghai port, which has been running at about half of its capacity for a month due to a citywide lockdown, is facing increasing congestion amid a lack of trucking services and manpower.
Imported containers are left unattended at the yards for as long as 12 days, compared with four and a half days before the lockdown, according to Freightos, a global freight booking platform.
“There have been some skipped port calls at Shanghai and some carriers have announced the cancellation of some services in May,” said Judah Levine, head of research at Freightos. “But these [cancellations] are not widespread yet.”
Yangshan and Waigaoqiao, the two major container ports in Shanghai, began operating under a so-called “closed loop” system on March 28 when the mainland’s financial and manufacturing hub embarked on a two-phase lockdown.
Many engineers, technicians, workers and drivers employed at the two harbours in Pudong – east of Shanghai’s Huangpu River – essentially sleep at the sites to ensure zero contact with outsiders.
While Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG), the state-owned operator of the two ports, would not disclose the size of labour force deployed for the “closed loop” operations, industry officials said the sites now account for just half of the total workforce before the lockdown was imposed.
Shanghai, the new epicentre of China’s latest Covid-19 outbreak, started a citywide lockdown on April 1.
The city, which has reported 544,000 infections and 285 deaths over the past two months, has yet to publish a time frame for lifting the lockdown.
SIPG said that it could still handle 100,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) a day in April. Based on the total throughput of 47 million TEUs last year, daily handling volume stood at about 129,000 TEUs.
Shipping executives, however, are
not convinced, saying the numbers do not tell the true story.
“The bulk of the containers are stuck at the terminals due to a shortage of trucks,” said Xiong Hao, an assistant general manager at Shanghai Jump International Shipping.
Shanghai has been the world’s largest container port for 12 years, buoyed by China’s booming exports and imports and the fastgrowing economy in the Yangtze River Delta, the mainland’s most affluent region.
Global shipping companies and exporters in the Yangtze region –
which comprises the eastern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, along with Shanghai – are turning to Ningbo port in Zhejiang, which is a three hours’ drive from Shanghai, to avoid the gridlock at Shanghai port.
Mila Shen, a merchant living in Shaoxing city in Zhejiang province and dealing with exports of Chinese-made consumer goods, said the lockdown in Shanghai had forced her to arrange outbound shipments via Ningbo.
“We have completely given up on Shanghai port because the warehouses [in Shaoxing] have banned trucks plying between the two cities,” she said.
“Ningbo port is facing congestion too. I had planned to book a slot on a container liner expected to depart on [April] 15. I am still waiting for a slot to export my cargo.”
At a meeting of the State Council on April 18, Vice-Premier Liu He instructed that a nationally recognised Covid-19 test pass be issued to enable truck drivers to deliver raw materials, components, food and essential supplies between provinces without having to wait for results at every stop.