YANTIAN, China – China’s largest container port returned to full operations last week. While the line of vessels waiting to berth has been eliminated, it will be a matter of weeks before supply chains utilizing Yantian International Container Terminals are back up to speed.
According to a report from American Shipper, the Port of Yantian still faces an accumulation of containers that backed up during the operational capacity impact of a coronavirus outbreak.
Port officials believe it will take a couple of weeks to work through the accumulation of containers at the port, but Akhil Nair, vice president of global carrier management and ocean strategy for SEKO Logistics, said in a press briefing last week that it will take at least a month to clear shipments clogging factories and warehouses in the Shenzhen region.
“The backlog is physically impacting production at factories because they simply don’t have warehousing space to store finished goods that can’t ship out on time,” Nair was quoted in the American Shipper article. “Pretty much every forwarder or logistics provider that has a facility at any major seaport is being utilized for temporary storage.”
Yantian began accepting vessels at all berths after running the port at 30% of normal operation since the third week of May.
Resumption of normal operations at Yantian also has reduced wait times at the nearby ports of Shekou and Nansha. A lot of traffic originally destined for Yantian had shifted to those smaller ports.
The report also cited executives at San Francisco-based freight forwarder Flexport, who said shipping times have more than doubled this year, with transit time for an intermodal move from Shanghai to Chicago via Southern California ports going from 35 days to 74 days.
I’m Powell Slaughter, senior editor at Furniture/Today. I returned to the publication in January 2015 after nine years of writing about furniture retail strategies and best practices at a monthly magazine focusing on home furnishings retail operations. Prior to that, I spent 10 years with F/T covering wood furniture, the last five of those as case goods editor. Upon my return to F/T, I developed coverage of the logistical and service aspects of the furniture industry as well as following the occasional, home office and home entertainment categories. In April 2018 I took over the upholstery category, with responsibility for coverage of the fabric and leather stationary and motion upholstery, recliners and massage chair categories.
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