Shanghai and Ningbo, the world’s two largest ports, continue to experience an extraordinary level of congestion.  A combination of rough weather, rising demand of commodities from other countries, with US in the lead and a surge of COVID cases in the country have contributed to the increase of the number of containerships being queued-up in the East China Sea.

The container flow at the two ports has been disrupted as terminals and many warehouses were shut down for several days end of July, when the typhoon In-Fa made landfall in Eastern China.
The global demand for goods has been higher than ever, especially as the winter holiday season approaches, adding to the disruption and congestion pressure not only on these two major ports, but also on other ports around the world.

At the same time, new anti-Covid measures are being carried out at most Chinese ports as the Delta variant of Covid-19 has been spreading over the past three weeks. According to Sea-Intelligence’s most recently weekly report “this might be an early warning of coming impact of more Covid restrictions in China, as the delta variant appears to continue to be present.”