Carriers warn of delays as congestion increases at North Europe's ports
Congestion levels are set to rise at ports across Northern Europe – expect schedule disruption, ...
© Martin Hatch
UK forwarders hit by delays in receiving containers though the port of Felixstowe have been warned that they cannot expect any compensation.
Forwarder body the British International Freight Association (BIFA) said it had held a meeting with Felixstowe owner Hutchison with the aim of recouping some of the extra costs that the congestion, following the troubled terminal operating system switch, had brought upon its members.
But Robert Keen, BIFA director general, said: “Having had a meeting with the port’s senior management, it is clear ...
Comment on this article
Ingvar Bergman
July 02, 2018 at 5:16 pmThe congestion in Felixstowe hit import to Scandinavia . A fresh example is goods onboard OOCL Japan scheduled to arrive June 28th to Helsingborg will now arrive July 10th – 14 days late (!) – because of a bad timing with a feeder-connection. Importers in ‘outports’ like Scandinavia and Baltic ports will face increasing problems with berthing delays in the t/s-ports and it hits them much harder than their peers on the continent because you have a feeder connection to meet. In the above case, customers and outport agents were not aware until June 26th that their goods were delayed, because the feeder could not wait.and needless to say this has far reaching implications where customers have already gone to their bankers and released Bs/L and prepared for customs clearance and trucking and in this case, goods will arrive during vacation time with further problems.
The Just-in-time shipments do not exist for Scan- and Baltic importers. Above case will have a transittime of 52 days (!) if not longer.
Gareth
July 30, 2018 at 9:25 amEven now on the 30th, the problems have not gone. We were due to have some goods arrive via OOCL Hong Kong (one of several largest ships in the world) on the 16th July. It arrived but due to delays (and perhaps inability to handle the volume of boxes on that ship), it cut and run, returning some 8 days later. When it eventually did return to Felixstowe, it only had a limited window before OOCL Indonesia arrived to take that berth. Meanwhile, Hong Kong had to anchor out at sea. A couple of days later, Indonesia also had to cut and run, failing to discharge all of her UK boxes.
While I only have one container on that boat (which may very well have cost us a £100k a year account), I know from our contact at the port that several rail operators have been running half empty because of the delays.
The ‘source’ referenced in the last paragraph is obviously talking out of their rear end.