The chaos in container shipping has reached Hamburg and Rotterdam.
Shipping companies ignore the ports.
Now the ships are piling up on the Rhine and Elbe.
Hamburg / Rotterdam - The global economy has picked up again after the first corona shock, more and more ships and containers are being sent back and forth between the continents.
But the global supply chains can no longer keep up.
The ships are becoming less punctual, timetables are wasted, capacities are becoming scarce.
The Maritime Analysis industry service comes to the conclusion that only around 25 percent of all ships were on time in April.
In the same period last year it was 70 percent.
To make matters worse, there are events that further exacerbate the problems.
Only the traffic jam caused by the Ever Given disaster in the Suez Canal in March caused additional delays.
Then China closed one of its most important ports in early June after a corona outbreak.
Chaos in container shipping: shipping companies avoid Hamburg and Rotterdam
As a result, the huge ships pile up in front of the ports, the containers pile up in the ports. But this problem was far away: only ports in China, Singapore or the USA seemed to be affected. But now there is chaos in Europe too. The ports of Hamburg and Rotterdam are struggling with capacity bottlenecks or delays.
That is why container shipping companies have deleted the two ports on the North Sea from their timetables.
The
Wirtschaftswoche
reported that Maersk and MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) no longer start up in Hamburg since early June.
This is justified with full location spaces and long waiting times.
Instead, terminals in Wilhelmshaven or Bremerhaven are used.
Actually, the measure should take four weeks.
But since there is no improvement in sight, it has been extended.
The same conditions prevail in Rotterdam.
The shipping company Hapag-Lloyd no longer calls at Europe's largest port, which handles 14 million standard containers each year, for an initial period of seven weeks.
Chaos in container shipping: Ships pile up on the Rhine and Elbe
But omitting the ports does not solve the problem. Because not only are the containers missing that are actually supposed to be unloaded. More and more containers are waiting to be picked up. That is why the traffic jam now extends to the rivers. Inland navigation operators transport many export containers from the interior of the country via the Rhine and Elbe to the seaports, where they are unloaded at the same terminals that the sea giants use. Since ocean-going vessels have priority, they are processed first and the river vessels have to wait. The Federal Association of inland navigation operators (BDB) reports waiting times of up to a week in Hamburg, in Rotterdam inland navigation operators have to wait an average of three days for the loading cranes.
The conditions in Rotterdam are now also affecting the German Rhine ports.
According to the marketer Duisport Agency, both trains and barges arrive late from the major seaports in the port of Duisburg.
This means that German industry must continue to cope with bottlenecks.
Because there is often a lack of building materials, chemical products, computer chips or even screws.
Although there are already some problems during production, the international logistics chaos also contributes to the delivery difficulties.
List of rubric lists: © Markus Tischler via www.imago-images.de
