China closes port after corona outbreak: Mega congestion of cargo ships threatens world trade and Germany too

Ships are jammed in front of the fourth largest port in the world due to a corona outbreak.

World trade is impaired - with serious consequences for Germany.  

Shenzhen / Yantian - The day-long blockade of the Suez Canal by the container ship Ever Given made the world aware of the vulnerability of global trade flows.

People, even in Germany, can still feel the effects today when they look at partially empty shelves while shopping.

A corona outbreak in early June in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, one of the country's most important production and export locations, shows that things can get worse.

This prompted the Chinese government to take tough measures that hit shipping traffic unexpectedly.

“The Chinese shut down the port of Yantian from one hour to the next without warning,” said Willem van der Schalk, Chairman of the Committee of German Seaport Freight Forwarders in the DSLV Federal Association of Forwarding and Logistics.

Mega traffic jam in front of the Chinese port: over 80 ships are waiting for clearance

The port of Yantian is considered the fourth largest container port in the world; over 27 million standard containers (TEU) were handled here last year.

For comparison: In Hamburg there were almost nine million containers.

As a result of the Corona measures, the container ships are stowed in front of Yantian.

At times over 80 ships are said to have waited to be loaded or unloaded.

The number of containers stuck in the port is said to have been even higher than during the six-day closure of the Suez Canal at the end of April.

Now the situation is coming to a head.

At the world's leading container line Maersk, the already existing delivery delay due to the container stowage has now increased from 14 to 16 days.

Mega traffic jam in front of the Chinese port: supply chains are expected to suffer by the end of the year

In the meantime, the situation in Guangdong is expected to normalize again, but the backlog is likely to have an impact on global supply chains for weeks.

Van der Schalk expects problems that will last even longer: “We assume that the supply chains will remain so tight until the end of the year.

The just-in-time principle has had its day. " 

Consumers in Germany also notice this.

Because container freight prices are rising sharply.

Ultimately, consumers will pay for these increased costs through higher prices.

Or they have to wait for products, especially electronics.

Because around 90 percent of all electronics exports from China go through Yantian. 

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Due to a corona outbreak, Chinese authorities have suddenly closed the port of Yantian

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The worsening delivery bottlenecks also endanger the upturn in the German economy.

"It is imperative to avoid causing the industry to stutter through artificial bottlenecks in transport capacities in the maritime supply chains," said a letter from German industry to the federal government.

Mega traffic jam in front of the Chinese port: upswing in the USA increases delivery bottlenecks

But the corona outbreak in Guangdong is not solely responsible for the problems in Germany and Europe.

Because the bottlenecks are also fueled by the high export figures from China and the sharp rise in consumption in the USA.

The transport options required for US imports from the Far East are missing on the routes between China and Europe.

A home-made problem for shipping companies also plays a role.

The longer transshipment times in the ports themselves are slowing down traffic.

The reason is that the ships are getting bigger and bigger.

Freighters with almost 24,000 container spaces are now on the move, causing huge volumes of cargo to be handled in the ports within a very short period of time.

It takes some time until these are processed.

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