News / Congestion at Tangier producing weeks-long port delays for box flows

Surging volumes are creating major delays at the port of Tangier, with forwarders informing The Loadstar they are contending with weeks-long waits and multiple rollovers.

Last year, the Moroccan gateway climbed into the list of top 20 global ports, in terms of volumes handled, after handling more than 10m teu for the first time – but that upswing has placed significant pressure on the port’s box terminals.

One forwarder told The Loadstar delays and congestion at Tangier had led to “more than four rollovers” of vessels carrying their shipments, wreaking havoc on their African business.

They said typical container transit times from Latin American to Tangier had leaped to between 30 and 40 days – average sailing time without congestion is 11 to 15 days.

They added that the gateway had found itself “overwhelmed” by its recent success – largely due to the Red Sea Crisis, the Houthi campaign having cut off Suez transits. This particularly hit the Asia-Mediterranean trade and forced carriers to use Tangier as a transhipment hub for east Mediterranean cargo.

As a result, throughput at Tangier’s four box terminals has boomed, from 8.6m teu in 2023 to 10.2 m teu last year, which according to the eeSea liner database, approached the port’s annual handling capacity of 10.4m teu and a utilisation level of 98%.

Although a further 200,000 teu of capacity has been added this year, a port industry rule of thumb is that a utlisation level of more than 80% normally results in congestion.

The problem, as confirmed by MD of Tanger Med Port Authority Hassan Abkari at the 2024 TOC conference in Rotterdam, was that due to vessel diversions around the Cape of Good Hope, Tangier had effectively become the first port of call for ships arriving from Asia.

“We have noticed recently that vessels from Asia have been arriving with a draught of more than 17.4 metres, implying they are completely loaded – we didn’t expect to see that for another 10 years – because they are not calling at any ports before us.”