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Container ships off Cuxhaven in mid-May: There are currently around a dozen waiting in the German Bight
Photo:
Rust / IMAGO
War and Corona have severely disrupted the supply chains of the global economy - and lead to long traffic jams and delays in front of numerous ports.
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), these consequences in container shipping have now also reached the North Sea.
"For the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, container ships are also damming up in the North Sea off the ports of Germany, Holland and Belgium," says the trade indicator that has now been published.
»Currently almost two percent of the global freight capacity is stuck here and cannot be loaded or unloaded.«
Many exports from China to Germany are no longer available
In the German Bight alone, around a dozen large container ships with a total capacity of around 150,000 standard containers are waiting to call at Hamburg or Bremerhaven.
The situation is even more dramatic in front of the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.
On the other hand, the container ship traffic jams off Los Angeles and southern California have completely receded.
In front of Shanghai and the neighboring province of Zhejiang, more than three percent of the global freight capacity is currently tied up in traffic jams.
According to the IfW, exports worth up to 700 million euros from China to Germany have so far been lost due to the lockdown in Shanghai.
For May, the barometer for world trade shows a slight minus of one percent compared to the previous month.
For Germany, too, exports are in the red (-1.2 percent), imports in the green (+1.6 percent).
According to the information, China stands out positively among the major economies in May, which is probably also due to the weak April: Compared to the previous month, exports are likely to have risen slightly (+2.1 percent) and imports even significantly (+7 percent). .
The export world champion and most important German trading partner is suffering from corona lockdowns, which also affected the economic metropolis of Shanghai with its huge port.
"All in all, May trading is rather restrained and continues the sideways movement of the last few months," said IfW expert Vincent Stamer.
"However, international trade is again suffering more from the traffic jams and delays in container shipping, which have now also reached the North Sea."
Apr/Reuters