News / Port congestion in Europe 'will last for years' – terminals 'chock-a-block full'

The “biggest challenge” that faced ocean freight stakeholders has begun to materialise, and will be exacerbated across the next few years, according to Stanley Smulders, director of product & network for Europe and Africa at carrier group ONE.

Mr Smulders told The Loadstar on the sidelines of this week’s Multimodal event in Birmingham that while demand was one thing, the biggest challenge that stakeholders faced was “the shortage of terminal capacity for big containerships”.

He explained: “If tomorrow the liners returned to using the Suez Canal, they would have a lot of ships available. If we filled all these ships with cargo in Asia, we physically could not discharge a single ship more in Europe than we do today.”

He said the ships were “now so big in terms of length, width and draught, but also in air draught for the cranes”, that terminals able to handle such large vessels were full.

While Asia “is okay” and the US “can still cope as it has “some slack because of volume volatility”, Mr Smulders pointed to Latin America and Europe as areas of particular concern.

“They are chock-a-block full in Europe. There’s hardly any exception, and it will last for a few years.

“That is because a lot of these big ships are already sailing, being ordered, and becoming available, and with the change in alliances, there are more transhipments, and so more terminal utilisation,” he explained.

“I don’t see any other ports that will have any expansion realised within the next two to three years,” he added.

Indeed, while the ort of Rotterdam “has a number of expansions ongoing”, Mr Smulders noted that these wouldn’t be complete for  years. According to him, ONE is interested in investing more in ports, and has bought shares in some terminals across the US, Indonesia and at Rotterdam.

“There are carriers that run particular terminals completely for their own use, but even all these are full, because if you invest in your own container terminal, you want to maximise that capacity.

“So, we see now a situation where everybody is in the same spot, and we need physically more container capacity.

“Even if demand grows every year by maybe 1%, we will be struggling. European ports seriously need to look at how they can expand to cater for larger types of containerships,” he concluded.