Global port congestion has surpassed pandemic-era peaks, with Linerlytica reporting 4.31 million TEUs waiting to berth in late August. Typhoons, strikes, and cascading schedule disruptions are overwhelming gateways from Shanghai to Hamburg, with some Chinese terminals seeing waits of up to 12 days.
Sea-Intelligence reports all 14 of Asia’s busiest container ports have seen declining on-time vessel arrivals, driven by consecutive typhoons and wider supply chain disruption. Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan were hardest hit, with schedule reliability at Shanghai dropping to its lowest level in 14 years of recorded data.
Sea-Intelligence estimates that 5 percent of global deep-sea container capacity is currently tied up by delays and congestion, well above the 2.2 percent pre-pandemic norm. That equates to roughly 1.7 million missing TEUs, with Asian ports, including Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, remaining the biggest hot spots.
