News / Mexican gateway struggling to get back to normal weeks after strike ends

Four weeks after the end of a brief strike by customs personnel, Mexico’s top container gateway is still struggling to get back to normal, with wait times for berths actually rising to 1.8 days – the highest level this year.

Nobody expected the repercussions of a protest by customs employees to last that long; on 12 May they stopped work and blocked access to the port in protest over working conditions following the appointment of a new head of customs one month earlier.

On 15 May the port of Manzanillo reported a partial resumption of customs activities, and a return to full operations was announced on 21 May – but alarm bells were ringing at the beginning of June amid signs that disruption was not easing.

The National Chamber of Freight Transport, Canacar, described chaotic scenes, with customs inspections of single shipments taking more than 72 hours and yards overwhelmed with thousands of stranded containers. In a social media post chamber president Miguel Angel Martinez described the situation as being on the brink of a breakdown.

In an update posted on 13 June, Kuehne + Nagel advised customers of “significant delays” in port operations at Manzanillo.

“Export truck assignment times require 48 hours, and imports require 48-72 hours. Due to high export volumes, there are currently rail delays. The average delay for rail imports and exports is 72 hours,” it warned.

Toward the end of last week, Hutchison and SSA Marine announced emergency measures at their facilities, including extended opening hours and customs mounted 24-hour operations for two consecutive days. And yesterday, GoComet posted delays of four days at the port.

Container throughput at the port climbed 1.5% in the first four months, year on year, to 1,291,721 teu – hardly a surge to overwhelm Mexico’s top gateway. However, Manzanillo has struggled for some time. At one point last October, 14 ships were waiting for berth space to offload their cargo.

The port’s productivity has declined over the last five years, which has sent the dwell time for freight on a ship up nearly fourfold, to 168 hours.

But relief is on the horizon. Last December the federal government announced a massive expansion project that would quadruple the port’s size and add four container terminals, aiming to raise capacity above 10 million teu. The project is supposed to be completed in 2030, so it looks as though congestion and delays may continue to loom over operators for some time yet.

As for the current predicament, Mexico’s Association of Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing Industries, Occident, predicted at the beginning of this month that operations could take up to five weeks to normalise. The episode could cost the port $150m in lost revenue, it added.