Increase in Far East exports leads to congestion in several ports in North America

Ports in North America, especially in the West Coast of the United States, are heavily congested since October 2020.

The recovery of chinese economy lead to an increase of export cargo from the Far East region. Additionally, factors like increase of e-commerce orders, stock replenishment in several companies and the traditional inbound cargo flow during holiday season, lead to significant increases in import of goods to North America.

This increase of inbound cargo, in a situation of low productivity in cargo terminals, as well as the low availability of chassis for deliveries at final destinations, increased the bottlenecks and spreaded congestion to other container terminals, rail ramps and distribution centers.

More recently, the demand of empty containers in the Far East region puts pressure on repositioning empty containers from other areas. The export of empty equipment is now taking priority over export of full containers, and this situation is already causing impact global trade, as Bloomberg reports in this article.

In order to mitigate the congestion and solve the empty container inbalance, shipping lines are implementing congestion and equipment repositioning surcharges.

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