Singapore, the world’s second-busiest container port, is facing severe congestion, causing significant shipping delays. According to Linerlytica, containerships must wait up to seven days to berth in Singapore so up to 450,000 TEUs are being held up.

The bottlenecks are mainly caused by vessel diversions from the Red Sea crisis and shipping lines bypassing less busy ports like Malaysia’s Port Klang. Meanwhile, the severe delays are forcing carriers to skip Singapore, causing issues such as cargo overloads at downstream ports and vessel bunching. The congestion in Singapore has also significantly impacted Asia-Europe service reliability.

Asian ports are heavily congested, with Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia accounting for 26% and 23% of global bottlenecks, respectively. Linerlytica expects port congestion to worsen in June. Port congestion is also placing a significant upward pressure on rates ahead of planned rate hikes for 1 June and 15 June by the shipping lines.

Nearly 2 million TEUs are currently tied up by congestion globally, the equivalent of almost 7% of the world’s shipping fleet.

Source: The Loadstar