• =?UTF-8?Q?Why_Container_Ships_Can=E2=80=99t_Sail_Around_the_Californ?=

    From David P.@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 7 10:47:35 2021
    Why Container Ships Can’t Sail Around the California Ports Bottleneck
    By Paul Berger, 9/21/21, Wall St. Journal

    There appears to be no sailing around the breathtaking
    backup of container ships off the jammed ports of
    Los Angeles and Long Beach.

    Newly arriving vessels are adding to a record-breaking
    flotilla waiting to unload cargo that on Sunday reached
    73 ships, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern
    California, nearly double the number a month ago and
    expanding a fleet that has become a stark sign of the
    disruptions and delays roiling global supply chains.

    Before the pandemic, it was unusual for more than one ship
    to wait for a berth.

    Big vessels are continuing to join the bottleneck, experts
    say, because shipping lines and their cargo customers have
    few options for resetting countless supply chains moving
    goods into the U.S. that have been constructed over decades
    around the critical San Pedro Bay gateway now staggered by
    the overflowing demand for imports.

    Although some ships have headed to other import gateways,
    and a handful of shippers have chartered smaller vessels
    to move goods through other ports, the diversion is minor
    compared with the hundreds of thousands of containers
    idled in the waters off Southern California.

    “Everything is aligned to L.A.,” said Nathan Strang, senior
    trade lane manager for ocean operations at Flexport Inc.,
    a San Francisco-based freight forwarder.

    The congestion this year has been caused by a surge in
    imports as consumer demand in the U.S. has shifted away
    from services to goods and home improvements and retailers
    have rushed to restock inventories that were depleted last
    year in the early months of the pandemic.

    The neighboring California ports are the principal seaborne
    gateway to the U.S. thanks to the growth of containerization
    over the past 60 years and an explosion in goods trade,
    particularly U.S. trade with China. Last year, the two
    ports handled the equivalent of 8.8 million loaded import
    containers, more than double the 3.9 million loaded boxes
    that arrived at the nation’s next busiest port at New York
    and New Jersey.

    The California ports are in easy range of China and the
    factories that churn out big volumes of electronics, apparel
    and an array of other consumer goods. They have enough land
    to house dozens of cranes capable of emptying large ships
    as well as sprawling terminals to store boxes.

    For the retailers that are among the major importers at
    Los Angeles and Long Beach, the ports offer quick reach to
    one of the largest population centers in the country. That
    means they can split arriving goods between a large local
    consumer base and rail links that offer steady, direct
    transport to the rest of the U.S. through inland hubs,
    with most of the boxes heading through Chicago.

    Despite some shortages, the availability of trucking
    equipment, warehouse space and labor is also far greater
    than at other ports.

    Shipping executives say other West Coast ports, like Oakland
    or Seattle, simply aren’t large enough to handle the hundreds
    of thousands of containers that Los Angeles and Long Beach
    unload, store and move by truck or rail each week.

    “It would just take a very small portion of L.A./Long Beach
    to overwhelm those ports,” said Craig Grossgart, senior VP
    of global ocean for Seko Logistics, an Itasca, Ill.-based
    freight forwarder.

    Executives say demand is so high that shippers are willing
    to take almost any route into the country to replenish
    inventories in time for the holidays.

    “We are using every available port that is out there,” said
    Sri Laxmana, the vice president of global ocean products
    at C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., the largest freight broker
    in North America.

    Some shippers have shifted freight to U.S. Gulf and East
    Coast ports, but that alternative also comes at a cost
    since it adds weeks to transit times from Asia & the longer
    routes are more expensive than shipping into the West Coast.

    “Shipping into the East Coast was the great secret for
    those of us advising early in the crisis,” said Bjorn Vang
    Jensen, VP of global supply chain at Denmark-based marine
    data company Sea-Intelligence ApS. “But the secret got out
    & now those ports are just as screwed as other ports are
    because everyone wants to go there.”

    In recent weeks, the Port of Savannah has had 20 or more
    ships at anchor waiting for a berth. Griff Lynch, executive
    director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said he expected
    the congestion would last for at least a couple of more
    weeks as shipping’s peak season continues.

    “This has never happened before,” he said.

    Companies that mitigated risk by shipping thru alternative
    ports have found themselves snarled by the Southern
    California congestion in other ways, too.

    Malouf Cos., a Logan, Utah-based furniture retailer that
    started shipping some of its goods thru Port Houston a few
    years ago, now is struggling to source containers because
    hundreds of thousands of the boxes are floating on ships
    waiting to unload at Los Angeles and Long Beach.

    Jordan Haws, Malouf’s director of supply chain, said the
    firm has about 55% of the inventory it would have if it
    was fully stocked.

    “It’s a vicious cycle that we are stuck in, and until that
    port can get on top of things, I don’t see things stabilizing throughout the trans-Pacific trade,” he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-container-ships-cant-sail-around-the-california-ports-bottleneck-11632216603

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