National Road Carriers Association chief executive David Aitken says his members are experiencing unprecedented delays at container depots and ports, with trucks queueing for several hours before collecting their container load.
“There are capacity issues right now, with ships sometimes running 10-12 days behind schedule; I do not think they are taking as many voyages in and out,” he said.
“The vehicle booking system (for container exchange) is simply unable to keep up. We have trucking companies that now have to give two to three days’ notice for container collection.”
He says container relocation due to shifts in shipping schedules means port capacity is at a maximum. Demand on trucks to move containers to where they need to be has pushed further costs onto carrier operators.
A rising tide of import demand and the impending export season means the country’s supply chain is likely to be stressed for months to come.
“If there are going to be all these problems, will shipping operators want to keep coming?” he asked.
New Zealand’s largest containerised exporter Kotahi’s chief executive David Ross says several factors have come together to create a perfect storm for NZ exporters and importers, and can be expected to continue into early 2021.
“There is an unexpected negative impact on container availability in NZ, which has been caused by the rebound in global trade and its impact on container flows in the last few months; a surprise to many, coupled with port disruptions in Australia and flow on impacts to Auckland. This will start to impact exporters,” he said.
“In addition to container availability issues, shipping lines are making adjustments to their vessel itineraries to manage capacity, congestion and weather impacts with global shipping statistics reporting a 15% drop in on-time performance. That’s big.”
Container Company, which accounts for about one million import-export container movements a year, director Ken Harris says there has been a lift of about 20% in imports, with all manner of consumer goods in demand.
Port of Auckland is NZ’s main import port, so pressure has ramped up on its capacity, and exacerbated by that port’s interrupted automation commissioning.
The Mediterranean Shipping Company has reported delays of 10-13 days for ships berthing at Auckland, with a congestion surcharge now applying.
Port of Auckland spokesperson Matt Ball says efforts to automate container operations had been interrupted twice by Level 4 lockdowns in the city, with skilled overseas commissioning staff unable to come into NZ to complete the job.
“So, we have had to reverse the operations back to manual operations, and we are now looking for over 50 staff at the port,” he said.
So far, the port’s employment processes had only procured seven.
He confirmed Maersk has dropped an Auckland call, going straight to Tauranga, requiring containers to be relocated back to Auckland and pushing Tauranga’s capacity.
“And you can be looking at seven to 10 days to get containers back to Auckland,” he said.
Harris says implications for exporters over the peak period would be in timing container loading and shipping, and was likely to continue until well into the new year, possibly until at least May.
Logistics company Coda’s chief executive Gerard Morrison says he was confident there would be sufficient containers and facilities to push through this year’s peak exports.
“Shipping lines are looking to evacuate sufficient containers here where possible, to ensure there are enough,” he said.
But the cost pressures on the supply chain would need to be addressed. Operators were losing thousands of hours with idle trucking assets, something that hit owner-operators particularly hard.
He says Auckland’s compromised capacity would have been a problem even in a normal year, and the sooner that issue was addressed the better.
Global container shipping rates have also increased over the course of the pandemic, fuelled by container scarcity in key export hubs, restocking demand in Europe and rejuggled global shipping schedules.
The Baltic Global Container Index has soared 30% since July, also fuelled by the lack of air freight capacity and growing demand on that capacity for personal protective equipment in freight orders.
Spot freight prices in China surged 10% in one week to reach prices not seen since early 2015, with only 2% of the world’s ships now classed “inactive,” compared to 12% in May.
Global air freight capacity remains severely depressed, with flights on average about two-thirds what they were pre-pandemic.
