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The unprecedented expansion in world demand for shipping has brought with it
unintended problems for the international shipping lines and ports.
Ports are getting congested, while ships are turning away cargo that they
courted so intensely only about a year ago.
In some trades, shortage of capacity in the market is also causing some of
the shipping lines to skip ports, including Port Klang which has always been
the last port of call on the Asia-Europe trade route.
The cargo shut out and skipping of Port Klang by some lines anxious to keep
to their tight schedules could impact on the growth of the port.
It is understood that some lines which are full to the brim when they call
at Singapore, have no choice but to skip Port Klang and head for Europe.
Omitting Port Klang by the shipping lines is also understood to be on
account of the fact that the ships now have to queue up Singapore which is
getting congested and causing ships to lose valuable time in the global
schedule.
In order to catch up with the lost time, shipping line tend to omit Port
Klang, a move which has also prompted some shippers to send their cargoes
from Port Klang to Singapore.
When it comes to skipping Port Klang, it does not help that the yield from
the freight rate at Port Klang for the shipping lines is very low.
The diversion could cause a dent in the otherwise buoyant growth of
container traffic at the two port operating terminals in Port Klang.
Meanwhile, shipping lines have been quick to play the congestion card to
raise the freight rates that are now reaching the full level of the tariff.
All major shipping lanes in the East West trade are witnessing increase in
freight rates.
Last week 13 lines serving the Asia-US box trade lane to consider further
increase next year on account of the steep increase in demand which they
having problem to cope with.
The 13 members of the Transpacific Stabilisation Agreement in Dubai
discussed how to deal with the problems of congestion, an affliction causing
havoc to global schedules.
"Member lines and their customers are grappling with transit time delays of
eight to nine days that are largely beyond their control, and infrastructure
gridlock that will easily take more than a year to fix," said TSA deputy
executive director Brian Conrad.
"Carriers are forced to skip port calls, shift priority cargo to other
sailings, burn more fuel to make up schedule time and incur added trucking
costs by using alternative US gateways among other strategies.
All that is in addition to long-term increases in equipment, charter, feeder
service, rail, truck, cargo handling, information systems, administrative
and capital costs.
"This is a critical problem for our industry and one that carriers will be
evaluating in coming months. Total costs for carriers were expected to rise
by 10% next year, said Conrad.
According to TSA, volumes on the route are likely to grow by 10 per cent to
12 per cent similar to what was expected this year.
Technically the amount of additional tonnage coming on to the trade lane is
forecast to be similar to the demand. But, claim the carriers, the new
"effective" capacity will be 2 per cent to 3 per cent less because of all
the expected congestion.
"As a result, carriers expect actual supply to lag behind demand during the
next year or more," the TSA said in a statement. |
