The container ports of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, which have been disrupted by corona measures, are now a bigger threat to international container shipping than the blockade of the Suez Canal last March.
With a delay for container shipping, which according to the latest Maersk update is now at least sixteen days, you will already have more than 400,000 TEU of blocked containers. “And on top of that are the numbers of the Shekou and Nansha container terminals,” says Maersk.
And unlike in the Suez Canal, the Dutch salvage company Boskalis cannot get the container traffic jam in South China out of trouble this time. There seems to be no prospect of a quick solution yet. Maersk repeated the same dreary message for several days in a row on Thursday: "The situation continues to worsen as more Covid cases are confirmed" in the ports of Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
"We regret to inform you," Maersk continued, "that 64 ships, including those of our partners, have avoided the ports of Yantian and Shekou to protect the reliability of the sailing schedule." Also other steamshiplines have cancelled a lot of stops in these ports.
Optimistic estimate
According to Maersk, the anticipated delay of more than two weeks is actually still an optimistic estimate: the Danish shipping company believes that container shipping can continue to suffer the consequences of the Shenzhen infarction for two to five weeks. “Shippers should not underestimate the magnitude of the upcoming waterbed effect.”
The container market was already on top of its toes before this new corona outbreak in southern China, says Maersk. Container shipping companies were busy getting empty containers back to China as quickly as possible for Chinese exports, and that operation is now going badly.
The German platform Container xChange, which keeps track of the availability of containers in its own index, sees that availability in Yantian, Shekou and Nansha indeed decrease considerably and speaks of a 'considerable malaise'.