Congestion at the Port of Singapore has gotten so bad that 90 percent of container ships are arriving at the site later than scheduled, Singapore’s transport minister Chee Hong Tat told the country’s parliament on Tuesday.
According to Chee, 77 percent of vessels were late to the port on average in 2023. But this year’s deluge of off-schedule arrivals has been compounded by the Red Sea crisis, in which ongoing attacks in the waterway by Yemen-based Houthi rebels have forced ocean carriers traveling between Asia and Europe to reroute ships around southern Africa.
“Many of the vessels are arriving within a short window, compounding the issue by causing a ‘vessel-bunching’ effect,” Chee told the parliament. “As a result, both the demands and complexity of container handling at our port have increased.”
Major global ports including Singapore, as well as Shanghai and Ningbo in China, and Port Kelang in Malaysia, have felt the heat of the congestion due to the lengthier transit times in addition to a capacity crunch out at sea. Maersk estimated that Asia-to-Europe shipping capacity would shrink by as much as 20 percent due to the mass rerouting.
Reference : https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/logistics/port-of-singapore-congestion-90-percent-late-off-schedule-container-shipping-global-trade-transshipment-red-sea-517284/