Barge operators are suffering delays of between three and four days at some Antwerp and Rotterdam container terminals.
And feeder lines complain of lengthening waits for their vessels to be handled at ECT facilities in Rotterdam.
In a customer notice last week, Duisburg-headquartered Contargo said its barges were waiting 92 hours for processing in Rotterdam and experiencing delays of up to 72 hours in Antwerp.
The company said the delays were causing “serious bottlenecks” in the supply chain and increasing charter hire costs for both its existing fleet and additional tonnage to bridge the waiting times.
Contargo warned that it would seek to pass these extra costs on to its customers in the form of a congestion charge “in the near future”.
One major feeder operator that serves the UK’s east coast and Ireland from Rotterdam said it was becoming “impossible” to run a schedule with the delays being experienced at the port, and said it was also considering imposing a congestion charge.
The feeder line executive and Contargo also complained about poor communication at Rotterdam, making it “very difficult to predict how long vessels will have to remain in port”, according to the barge operator.
The congestion at the Benelux container hubs is a worry for shippers and service providers alike, not least as it is happening when carriers have blanked a number of sailings from Asia due to lack of demand after Chinese New Year.
Indeed, it brings back the spectre of the gridlocked North European container terminals of last year, when the supply chain was seriously disrupted.
A survey by The Loadstar found that the North European container hubs were recording strong growth, with several terminals operating at high utilisation levels, despite it still being the so-called low season.
A Port of Rotterdam spokesman told The Loadstar it was seeing the 6% year-on-year growth from 2014 continue into the first two months of this year, but he maintained that the measures that ECT was undertaking would mean it would be able to handle the growing volumes.
ECT public affairs officer Rob Bagchus confirmed it was working in close co-operation with the port to overcome the delays – “together with all stakeholders involved to make optimum use of the available capacity” and “to establish the necessary processes and procedures that will enable efficient handling of cargo at peak moments”.
The Rotterdam spokesman added: “We realise that parties may have to adapt the way they’re doing business to this situation, but that’s the best alternative. It’s better, for instance, to have a minimum call size for inland barges than to have long waiting times.
He continued: “Compared with last year, we’re taking measures much earlier in the process and much attention is being paid to communication with all parties involved.”
This last statement rather contradicts the experience of Contargo and the feeder operator, but the willingness of the port and the terminal to admit to the problem at an early stage suggests lessons have been learned from last year.
Interestingly, no mention was made by either the port or ECT that the impact of much bigger ships by carriers and their tardy timekeeping – according to analysts liner schedules plunged to an on-time reliability level of just over 50% in January – had contributed to the congestion by failing to make assigned berthing windows.
At the time of writing, Antwerp had not responded to The Loadstar’squestions, but at Hamburg – which was badly affected by terminal congestion last year – a spokesman for the port’s marketing organisation said “at the moment we do not see any congestion in our port”.
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