Port congestion at Asian ports reported; Singapore’s average waiting time up to 1.5 days

[SINGAPORE] Port congestion has been reported at Asian ports, with Singapore being one of those impacted – the berth waiting time at the world’s top transhipment hub is said to be between 12 and 36 hours.

Liner Hapag-Lloyd’s customers were updated as at May 26 that some Asian ports were facing increased waiting times due to berth congestion.

The Chinese ports of Shanghai and Qingdao were among the worst hit, with the average hold-up ranging from 24 to 72 hours.

China’s Ningbo, South Korea’s Busan and Japan’s Yokohama ports were reportedly seeing average waiting times of 24 to 36 hours, 18 hours, and 12 to 24 hours, respectively.

The longer waiting times at Singapore were due to vessel bunching and congestion, the liner said.

The Business Times has reached out to port operator PSA Singapore for comment.

Similarly, Kuehne+Nagel has pointed out that Singapore was “heavily disrupted” – as was the neighbouring Port Klang in Malaysia.

Vessels calling at the Republic’s port have had an average waiting time of around 1.82 days over the last seven days, said the freight forwarder in its weekly update. “The port is seeing several vessels arrive at once. Transhipment cargo is delayed by one to two weeks.”

Port Klang’s berth congestion has resulted in the average vessel waiting time to be around 1.46 days, based on Kuehne+Nagel data. “Some vessels can wait up to 2.5 days. Yard congestion is around 90 per cent, reducing productivity.”

Data service EconDB numbers showed that the dwell times for transhipments at Singapore port averaged 9.5 days as at May 19, against the peak of 10.8 days in late May 2024 and the average of 7.6 days since March 2022.

Earlier, analysts cautioned that port congestions in Europe might have spillover impact on Asian trade lanes.

Meanwhile, cargoes from countries and economies given a 90-day reprieve from reciprocal tariffs by the United States have been rushing out of ports since the pause was announced on Apr 9.

Mainland China got its truce with the US on May 12, unleashing a wave of shipments including those had been held back from April to mid-May.

Total capacity on the Transpacific – primarily from Asia to the US – is set to rebound sharply in the coming four weeks, with an average of over 560,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs, a measure of freight capacity) departing from Asia to the US weekly. This is about 50 per cent more than the previous fortnight.

The higher supply is expected to rein in the rise in freight rates for the Transpacific trade lanes, after the US-China trade detente arrested the decline in the shipping costs.

Last year, port congestion prompted some liners to skip Singapore after berthing delays at the South-east Asian transhipment hub hit a historic high – caused by some operators that discharged more containers there as they scrapped subsequent voyages to catch up on their next schedules amid Red Sea detours.