ASIA TRADE UPDATE

Further outbreaks of COVID cases in the Shenzhen & Guangzhou regions of Southern China have significantly escalated over the past couple of weeks, which has led to major delays from the ports of Yantian, Shekou and Nansha.

Yantian is experiencing delays of 15 days or more and up to forty ships are now reportedly anchored in wait, which is being reported as potentially as damaging as Suez.

The Western area of the port has had operations suspended and many containers that had already entered that section of the port are unable to move. The Eastern area of the port is working at a heavily reduced capacity due to the strict Covid measures that have been recently introduced.

Many carriers are now omitting calls at Yantian and Shekhou ports, as congestion and slow port operations has led to backlogs of around 3 weeks, and this is increasing pressure on nearby Nansha and Hong Kong terminals.

Therefore, imports and exports through the whole region are proving to be even more challenging than they have been over recent weeks and depending on the ability of China to close down further spread of Covid, we may see the current conditions continue into the next quarter.

As we witnessed with Suez, the result of vessels being delayed at anchor, with containers onboard, is likely to mean further issues with container equipment availability further down the line.

As always, your Westbound team are working incredibly hard to mitigate the impact on customer’s supply chains and will continue to work with you to try to find alternative solutions, where we can. For further information, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the team.