A NEW report exploring capacity restrictions resulting from skipped port calls and blank sailings has found global ports lost more than a third of their expected capacity to ship containers during 2021.
The study was commissioned by the Global Shippers Forum and carried out by transport consultancy firm MDS Transmodal.
Research found lost capacity has not only created delays and disruption for shippers but has also brought economic harm to some smaller developing nations.
Lost capacity is a measure of the total number of container ship slots which were expected to be available at a port, but did not materialise because the port was skipped, or because the entire service was blanked by the shipping line.
MDST senior consultant Antonella Teodoro said researchers considered two major elements when analysing the capacity offered by shipping lines.
These elements include the company’s intention (or not) to call at a given port, and the calls the company actually made.
“Looking at the data from [the first quarter of 2019] onwards, we observe that carriers have been reducing the scheduled capacity offered to some ports but also reduced the level of capacity actually provided,” Ms Teodoro said.
“These reductions have translated in deterioration of connectivity with some countries losing direct connections.”
Internationally, the study highlighted ports of Colombo, Sri Lanka; Piraeus, Greece; Felixstowe, UK; and Jebel Ali, UAE, which were hit particularly hard by skipped calls.
Around 40% of the container capacity expected at Colombo and Piraeus failed to arrive in the last quarter of 2021, in comparison with pre-pandemic levels of between 15% and 20%. Felixstowe and Jebel Ali failed to see around a third of their expected capacity.
Closer to home, similar levels of capacity were lost in the Asia Pacific region. Port Klang in Malaysia suffered a 40% shortfall, and Melbourne and Tauranga were down by around a third of the expected container capacity during the second half of 2021.
According to MDST, most of the expected vessels would already have been fully occupied by containers collected at ports called at earlier on the service.
The decision to skip a port is often taken because there is no space on board to take any more, or because there are so few spare slots that the call is uneconomic.
As a result, the collapse in service levels available to shippers at the ports affected is significant and amounts to more than the inconvenience of having to wait for the next ship.
GSF director James Hookham said skipped ports impact shippers in several ways.
“They create local upward pressure on shipping rates, as shipping line agents ‘auction-off’ available slots on the vessels that do call,” he said.
“Shippers also face unexpected surcharges for the handling and storage of delayed containers.
“More pernicious is the wider effect on national economies, especially those of developing nations that lose opportunity to deliver their exports and hinder the recovery of their economy from the effects of lockdowns and COVID restrictions.”
Mr Hookham said ports reliant on calls from vessels on Asia-Europe routes have suffered especially badly, adding to the pressures on local economies as they struggle to recover from the impacts of COVID-19.
He said such schedule alterations translate into huge aggregate capacities lost to importers and exporters.
“Skipped ports and blanked sailings have evidently become central to the way shipping lines are managing the capacity of their heavily utilized fleets.
“As the pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic ease, GSF will be monitoring the restoration of service predictability for shippers at these and other key global ports to ensure the benefits of service reliability and frequency promised by consortia and alliance operations are reinstated.”
The results of the ongoing analysis of lost capacity analysis will become part of MDST’s quarterly Container Shipping Market Review produced for shippers on behalf of GSF.
