Congestion is affecting box traffic at Rotterdam’s Delta Terminal, run by Hutchison Port Holdings-owned Europe Container Terminal (ECT), which has confirmed to Lloyd’s Loading List.com that the disruptions are likely to continue for several more weeks.
Short-sea shipping operator OPDR has alerted its customers of delays of up to 48 hours, claiming the congestion was “due to the late arrivals of deep sea vessels, system outages and shortages of labour”.
Congestion is affecting box traffic at Rotterdam’s Delta Terminal, run by Hutchison Port Holdings-owned Europe Container Terminal (ECT), which has confirmed to Lloyd’s Loading List.com that the disruptions are likely to continue for several more weeks.
Short-sea shipping operator OPDR has alerted its customers of delays of up to 48 hours, claiming the congestion was “due to the late arrivals of deep sea vessels, system outages and shortages of labour”.
The company said it had been informed that the situation “will last for at least another 1-2 months”.
ECT spokesman Rob Bagchus told Lloyd’s Loading List that the current difficulties were partly due to the impact of an on-going investment programme at the Delta Terminal, but were also due to the disrupted sailing schedules of some lines.
“New quay cranes are currently being made ready for use, which means unfortunately that we temporarily have less available quay capacity on the south side of the Delta Terminal,” he said.
“From the end of June 2014, the first cranes will be operational and the quay will then be available again. We are doing everything we can to solve the problems as quickly as possible and expect to see structural improvements within a reasonable period."
However, he said the difficulties had been exacerbated as a consequence of “deep-sea ships being ‘out of window’ for some time now”, with one factor being storms in south-east Asia.
“Of course, we are in a position to accommodate fluctuations to some extent, but the current situation is exceptional,” said Bagchus.
“At the moment, we’re maximising the use of our capacity by transferring ships to other ECT terminals. Nevertheless, we have a limited influence on the sailing schedules of our clients.”
Meanwhile, APM Terminals stressed that it was not experiencing any delays at Rotterdam.
A spokesperson said: “Our operations are running normally and we have been approached by other liner operators to handle their business during this situation [at Delta Terminal].
“Four additional ship calls were added recently and we have capacity for more calls.
Discussion about this post