Pre-Lunar New Year Rush Escalates Congestion Across Chinese Ports
- Nearly one out of every nine ships globally is idling at port anchorages due to severe weather conditions and high pre-Lunar New Year cargo volumes, with 3.3 million TEUs out of commission as of Tuesday.
As China’s Lunar New Year begins, worldwide port congestion has gotten so hectic that nearly one of out every nine ships is now idling somewhere.
According to data from container shipping analysis firm Linerlytica, 10.5 percent of global vessel capacity is waiting at port anchorages worldwide—meaning that 3.3 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) are out of commission as of Tuesday.
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The company attributes the congestion to severe weather conditions and high pre-Lunar New Year cargo volumes, which were largely pulled forward earlier than normal during the winter in anticipation of Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency.
“Chinese ports are extremely congested in the run-up to the holidays, with both the Yangtze River ports and Pearl River Delta ports recording a significant surge in gate and berth congestion,” said Linerlytica in a blog post. “The pre-holiday cargo rush has been exacerbated by heavy demand to beat potential U.S. tariffs for Chinese imports, with carriers also scrambling to build cargo roll pools ahead of the holiday lull.”
Thus far, it appears the biggest hangups are in China, where container vessels are picking up final shipments ahead of the two-week factory closures across the country. China already saw a 10.7 percent annual increase in exports in December, reaching a record 2.5 trillion yuan ($344.8 billion) due to the impending tariff threats under Trump. These were expected to take effect Feb. 1 , but specifics still have not been ironed out.
The top culprits to kick off the year are the Chinese ports of Shanghai , Ningbo and Shenzhen, with the first two enduring ongoing port congestion throughout much of 2024. Already the world’s busiest port, Shanghai’s traffic resulted in the port becoming the first to handle 50 million TEUs in 2024.
As of Jan. 28, the queue-to-berth ratio at the Shanghai and Ningbo ports combined was 1.96, meaning there were 157 vessels (696,134 TEUs) at anchorage compared to 80 ships (554,336 containers) docked at the ports.
Shenzhen follows the two hubs with 49 ships and 204,572 TEUs at anchorage, compared to 35 vessels and 272,257 TEUs at port. Yantian Port, a major hub within Shenzhen that handles more than one fourth of China’s exports to the U.S., said in a statement that it increased the daily quota on containers by 15 percent during Jan. 20-28.
A Jan. 24 report from Reuters indicated that one truck driver, Li Guoliang, took two hours to transport a loaded container to a container yard at Yantian, a fourfold increase from the typical time spent on that task on a normal day.
As congestion at Yantian worsened, trucking fees escalated, the report said, ultimately costing more for exporters.
“The major reason is that factories rushed to ship before the holiday, and limited container quota at the port and space at container yards resulted in the congestion,” Li told Reuters.
Outside of China, ports in Northern Europe and the southern U.S. East Coast are seeing a buildup of vessels at anchorage due to the escalating congestion.
Rotterdam and Antwerp are harboring 20 ships at anchorage (161,125 TEUs) and 18 vessels at anchorage (136,438 TEUs) respectively, according to Linerlytica. Savannah and Charleston are the two other gateways worldwide with more than 100,000 TEUs currently awaiting to dock at their respective ports, the firm says.
Additionally, there is potential for more congestion out of Bangladesh’s largest seaport, Chattogram Port , as employees of the country’s state-owned railway system went on strike Tuesday. Already seeing backlogs in its rail cargo due to a shortage of boxcars, the suspension of freight trains from Chattogram is expected to result in an immediate buildup of containers on Wednesday.
If global congestion happens to get worse, it “could provide some relief for carriers as they will be forced to remove more capacity than originally planned,” according to Linerlytica. Such concerns from the container shipping industry come as more ships are expected to come online in 2025 as the major carriers set new vessel-sharing alliances starting in February.
While there is no seeming end to the port congestion just yet amid the current geopolitical backdrop of a tariff-heavy U.S. presidential administration, a possible return to the Red Sea amid an Israel-Hamas ceasefire could potentially help push the situation in the right direction. With the mass rerouting of ships away from the Suez Canal all throughout 2024 contributing to vessel bunching at major global ports, all eyes will remain on the ocean carriers to determine if they feel it is safe to return to the conflict-ridden waterway.
