One out of five container ships suffer from congestion

1826 CONTAINER SHIPS IN CONGESTION

Last week, about one-fifth of the global container fleet was waiting at ports to be loaded and unloaded.

This was reported by Israel’s Windward, which claims to be a leader in the field of artificial intelligence. At mid-month, the agency counted 1,826 container ships that had to wait to get in. There were over 500 container ships at the entrance at China’s ports, which is over a quarter of all ‘congestion ships’.

Windward pointed out that the lockdown of the Chinese port cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen, has massively exacerbated the global congestion problem. Two months ago, in mid-February, there were “only” 260 ships waiting at the entrance of the Chinese ports, according to the agency.

The lockdown has led to a decline in the reliability of container shipping. Just before that, Denmark’s Sea-Intelligence reported the first improvement in punctuality in two years. The agency said in February that reliability appeared to be returning to the highest level that has not been seen since mid-2021.