Global supply chains have been facing several major disruptions in 2021 and port congestion is only one of them according to a new analysis by container visibility platform, project44.

In a statement, it said vessel schedule disruptions with increases of up to 45% in the ratio of container rollovers, increased transit times and increases in blank sailings, are among the underlying factors causing shipment delays and global supply chain disruptions.

 “While the current supply chain disruptions have been widely attributed to port congestion, we have been tracking a few other correlated metrics that contribute to this unprecedented global crisis,” says Josh Brazil, VP of Data Insights at project44.

“Looking at future blank sailing schedules there seems to be no immediate improvement on the horizon and we don’t see the situation improving until after Lunar New Year in 2022 when China will shut down for about two weeks.”

Brazil noted that about 60-70,000 containers are also expected to come into service around mid-2022 and many of the new vessel orders will be on the water by mid-late 2023.

Container rollover issue

project44 noted that global container movement has been "affected significantly" by an increasing number of containers rolled and delayed across major transhipment hubs around the world.

“Ports were never meant to be storage facilities and in most cases average dwell time for transhipment containers used to be 5 days maximum,” Brazil said.

project44 noted that out of the major transhipment ports considered in the analysis, Port Klang had the highest rollover percentage 58.45% in 2021 which is an increase of 37.94% compared to 2020.  

Shanghai — the world's busiest port — recorded 38.66% of rollovers in 2021 which is an increase of 45.22% compared to the rollovers in 2020.

Meanwhile, Algeciras, Jebel Ali, Pusan, Tanjung Pelepas, Hong Kong and Singapore all recorded higher percentage of rollovers in 2021 compared to 2020 but the percentage of change was lower than 2019-2020. 

On the European side, Rotterdam also showed an increase with rollovers increasing from 38.95% in 2020 to 51.00% in 2021 or up by 30.94%.

“The increase in rollovers at key transhipment ports around the world is a worrying factor in terms of schedule reliability,” Brazil said. “This means continuing schedule uncertainty, consistent increases and delays in cargo lead times.”

Transit times, blank sailings

According to project44 data, transit time for containers has also drastically increased between 2019 and 2021 for the main corridors of China to North America West Coast and China to Europe.

It said when comparing the main ports in China to the West Coast of North America, Yantian had the highest percentage change in transit time increasing by 42.11% in 2021 compared to its 2020 levels while Ningbo had the lowest percentage increase at 27.78%. 

When compared to 2019 levels, the 2021 transit time increases were all above 40% which is significant considering the already stressed supply chains.

It said on the service to Europe, Shanghai had the highest percentage increase in transit time increasing by 30.56% in 2021 compared to its 2020 levels while Qingdao had the lowest percentage increase at 25%. 

When compared to 2019 levels, the 2021 transit time increases were all above 35% which is significant as this is a major contributor to the shipment delays, project44 said.

Brazil of project44 also noted that blank sailing is another major factor that impacts container rollovers.

“Blank sailings is a key factor in network disruption. The number of containers sitting in tranship ports on “sweeper” vessels has distorted the equilibrium in the global network," he said, noting that according to data, there was an increase in the number of vessels that skipped their scheduled port calls leaving hundreds of thousands of containers and millions of shipments behind putting further pressure not only on consumers but on container terminals and personnel.

It said Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia recorded the highest number of blank sailings in 2021 with 31 blank sailings which was a slight improvement to the 35 blank sailings in 2020.

The largest increase in the number of blank sailings was however, Port Klang which recorded 13.5 blank sailings in 2021 compared to 1.25 blank sailings on average in 2020 across the same services. This is a staggering 980% increase compared to 2020, the report added.

As per project44’s analysis of the carrier’s sailing schedules, it said the trend of blank sailings seems to be continuing well into November and December 2021 with up to almost 50 blank sailings on some routes.

“We have seen that carriers are however, looking for service opportunities where they could possibly get 2-3 extra vessels on the East-West trade for empty repositioning as it would be better for them to move empties than utilizing them for exports as a lot of these exports are for low price commodities which ties up the equipment,” Brazil said.