Congestion was got worse! The time to arrive at the port of destination was doubled! Rates will set to hit new highs in the coming weeks! New York, New Jersey Port is now a rare backlog!

New data showed how long it took for containers to reach their destination ports on the main east-west trade route, helping to explain port congestion around the world over the past year.

Flexport, a San Francisco-based freight forwarder and customs broker, provides a weekly metric called the Ocean timerindicator, which measured the time it takes for an exporter to have a shipment ready to an importer to pick it up.

On the transpacific eastbound route, the average transit time from pre-pandemic in 2019 was 45 to 50 days to the latest measured record high of 110 days on January 2, 2022, indicating worsening congestion and bottlenecks.  

Likewise, from Asia to Europe the average pre-pandemic transit time was around 55 to 60 days, compared to 108 days on January 2.

In their latest weekly report, analysts at Sea-Intelligence noted: "This extreme increase in transit time has led to a similarly large increase in demand for containers - simply because each container is occupied for longer than Much longer than usual."  

Before the pandemic, 2% of container capacity was typically delayed, and in 2021 that number has surged to 11%, according to Sea-Intelligence. Early indicators this year suggest congestion is far from improving.

"The data available so far suggest that congestion and bottlenecks are getting worse going into 2022," Sea-Intelligence warned.  

“Port congestion and inefficiency remain an ongoing problem, resulting in slow sailing, diversion of ships to different ports, uncirculated containers and extended unloading times for workers ashore. The Covid-19 pandemic is still driving consumer demand for commodities We believe rates will hit record highs in the coming weeks,” said a new shipping report from investment bank Jefferies on the 10th.

Pandemic and holidays lead to rare backlog in New York and New Jersey ports

The ports of New York and New Jersey are facing a backlog of about 10 to 12 container ships, an unusual occurrence attributed to the outbreak, combined with a December holiday for workers, an increase in ships needing berths and last week's snowstorm.  

"There's been a surge in the workforce going into quarantine due to the pandemic," said Port Authority Director Sam Ruda. Jim McNamara, spokesman for the International Dock Workers Association, said about 350 members were furloughed each day due to the COVID-19, which was in part overwhelmed by other dock workers offset by availability.  

While omicron is taking its toll, the port is continuing to deal with increased throughput, with its cargo volumes increased by more than 25% between November 2019 and November 2021. "We've basically achieved the freight growth of the last five years in about 18, 20 months. ” Ruda said.

The result of combining these factors was that the average waiting time for container ships to berth in the last week of 2021 was 4.75 days, while the average waiting time for the whole year was 1.6 days.