Update: container shipping issues – daily tariffs and more delays

11 January 2021

There seems to be no end in sight yet to the current chaos in container shipping. The shortage of containers is rising, as are the tariffs. Various media outlets interviewed our colleague Ad about the situation. In addition, rotation changes are causing considerable delays in unloading activities at the port of Rotterdam. What can you expect if you import goods from Asia?

Daily tariffs

The lack of capacity is pushing tariffs higher still. Coronavirus-related issues are part of the problem. What’s more, China’s export is up by more than 21% (!) from last year, making space on ships from Asia very scarce and valuable.

By now, the situation is almost unworkable. Tariffs often remain valid for no more than a day, and this applies to sea freight, air freight and rail transport. This is because other modalities are also facing a lack of capacity. We expect the issues surrounding import from Asia to persist until well after the Chinese New Year.

Delays: arrival at Rotterdam

The delays occurring in the countries of origin and the transhipment ports have an impact on the arrival of ships in Rotterdam. Container ships suffer delays in coming in and are unloaded later than planned. This in turn affects planning and schedules at the terminals, causing even more unloading delays.

In order to prevent further and rising delays, shipping companies frequently decide on implementing rotation changes, meaning changes to the schedule. Other nearby ports, such as Antwerp and Hamburg, will be moved up the list in this case, and unloading at the port of Rotterdam will take place after. For this reason, we ask you to please take into account extra delays just prior to the planned ETA.

Our operations team is keeping a very close eye on the expected arrival time of your goods in Rotterdam. We will notify you as soon as possible in the event of delays to your shipment, as you’ve come to expect from us.

Ritra Cargo in the media

This month, various media outlets spoke to our colleague Ad Schoenmakers about the impact of the issues with container shipping. He was on* Radio Rijnmond very early one morning, and the Financieel Dagblad also interviewed Ad and published an insightful piece about the current situation: “Importeurs vrezen lege schappen door chaos in containervaart” (in Dutch, only for FD subscribers). Other news sites, such as supplychainmagazine.nl, offer a summary of this article.

*Click on the second image to hear the audio clip.