Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: Port Congestion Worsens In Some Markets Despite Efforts To Cut Delays

Press release from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce:

February 07, 2022

Governments and shipping companies have made uneven progress easing costly container ship delays as congestion spreads from the nation's largest ports on the West Coast to cargo gateways from the Gulf of Mexico to the East Coast.

The number of days container ships spent backed up at sea increased at seven of the nation’s 11 largest seaports ranked by freight volume between Dec. 20 and Jan. 31, according to data gathered by GoComet, a Singapore-based firm that tracks ocean freight movement across the globe.

Container ships are backing up outside U.S. ports for a variety of reasons, from a record flow of goods into and out of the country to pandemic-induced labor shortages. Moving goods efficiently is critical to the global economy and the industrial real estate markets that benefit from healthy port activity.

As businesses race to find temporary storage for goods and take greater control of their inventories, warehouse vacancy rates have dipped below 1% in markets near the Southern California ports. That demand has allowed industrial landlords to increase rents at more than double-digit rates.

The amount of time that cargo spent lingering in long queues of ships outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which process 40% of the nation's container imports, showed signs of decreasing in November as carriers faced fines for containers that sat at sea too long.

The Port of Long Beach reduced the waiting time to three days on Jan. 31 from almost 24 days on Dec. 20, according to GoComet. Delays increased from an average of 13 days to 15 days at the Port of Los Angeles over the same time.

Florida’s ports at Jacksonville and Miami were the only other cargo gateways among the 11 ports able to reduce delays. The Jacksonville port cut the delays to two days as of Jan. 31 from 11 days on Dec. 20, and Miami trimmed its average delays to three days from 11, according to GoComet data.

Source: www.CoStar.com

This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.