News / Yantian port logjam eases and 'normal service will resume this month'

Yantian International Container Terminal (YICT) has informed customers that the bottleneck at the port had eased, and normal operations would resume by the end of the month.

Following a Covid-19 outbreak in the port area and nearby Guangzhou in late May, YICT’s operations were disrupted by prevention and restriction measures.

In a customer advisory, the port management said: “Current overall operational capacity has returned to 70% of normal levels, and container yard utilisation has dropped from 100% to 70%.”

According to YICT, this will help volume throughput at the port increase steadily. The number of trailers coming through the gate has reached 8,000 a day, and this will also gradually increase, it said.

“With the hard work and support of all parties, YICT aims to resume normal operations soonest. Based on preliminary estimates, a full-scale recovery can be expected in the last week of June.”

Delays at YICT stretched to more than two weeks and affected other major Chinese ports like Guangzhou and Shanghai, exceeding the six-day waits seen after the Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal in March. This caused some liner operators to skip calls at YICT, one of China’s busiest container ports with an annual handling volume of more than 13m teu.