- Hutchison Ports says Yantian International Container Terminal (YICT) in southern China lowered the cut-off time for receiving outbound containers since Wednesday.
- It claims that delayed ship arrivals have caused containers to pile up in its yard.
- YICT is one of three sub-ports that make up Shenzhen port, the others being Nanshan and Dachan Bay.
A recent Loadstar news article published by Nick Savvides states that Yantian limits intake of export containers amid new year holiday rush.
China’s third-busiest container port
Shenzhen is China’s third-busiest container port, after Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan, and the fourth-busiest in the world. In 2020, Shenzhen handled 26.55m teu, up 3% from 2019, and YICT is estimated to have contributed 14.16m teu, up 6% year on year.
With just over a week to go before the Chinese New Year begins on 1 February, YICT said more containers were arriving at its yard, as exporters hurried to ship out their cargo before the week-long holiday.
Many laden boxes stuck in the terminal
“There are many laden boxes stuck in the terminal and yard density close to full,” said YICT, which is maintaining the gate-in quota at 12,000 laden containers.
Compounding the situation, Covid-19-related port congestion has interfered with liner operators’ shipping reliability, with YICT saying vessel arrivals have been delayed by as much as 170 hours.
Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy said in a recent note that the congestion and bottleneck problems, which began in late 2020, are persisting because liner operator schedule reliability sank below 40% last year.
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Source: The Loadstar
