Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Port of Rotterdam struggles with severe cargo bottleneck
Europe's busiest container port, the Port of Rotterdam, is struggling to move cargo as an unexpected surge in volume has created a serious bottleneck, just when work to upgrade the facility has reduced capacity.
Many shippers are rushing to divert goods to alternate routes to avoid some of the longest delays in years at the port, after being forced to pay hefty charges due to the delays.
The revamp of one of the port's four terminals and many off-schedule ship arrivals are intensifying the cargo snarl.
"It's pretty severe with deep-sea vessels arriving out of schedule and the terminal upgrades happening at the same time," said Lodewijk Wisse, a maritime policy adviser at the Dutch Shippers' Council (EVO), a trade group of cargo owners. "We have [containers] that can't be loaded up to smaller ships for transshipment to other European ports."
Wisse cited delays of up to seven days. Shippers are paying congestion charges of up to $75 per-container to compensate operators of support vessels such as feeder ships and barges.
Shipping executives and exporters are saying the Rotterdam disruption is the worst they have seen at a major port in years.
For more of the Wall Street Journal story: online.wsj.com
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