China’s top container ports are loosening the backlog of cargoes as virus curbs ease

China’s top container ports are loosening the backlog of cargoes on their docks as workers return to their posts after coronavirus travel curbs that kept them away and jammed up global supply chains have been eased.

The flu-like epidemic, which originated in the city of Wuhan, an inland logistics hub in Hubei province, has killed more that 2,700 and infected over 78,000 in China alone, and caused massive port congestion due to labor shortages caused by city lockdowns across the country.

China is the largest container cargo handler - processing around 30% of global traffic or around 715,000 containers a day in 2019 - and the virus clampdown impacted supply chains of everything from sneakers and machine parts to technology components and food items.

The average wait time for container vessels at Zhoushan (601018.SS) in southern China - the third-largest container port in the world by annual handling capacity - spiked to more than 60 hours in the week of Feb. 11-17, when travel curbs on workers returning from the prolonged Lunar New Year holiday forced ports to operate with skeleton staffing.

That was around 15 hours longer than the week before the holiday, and nearly 20 hours more than the average in early January before the travel restrictions, according to Shanghai International Shipping Institute (SISI) data.

But turnaround times at Zhoushan and other ports are starting to improve as more container crane operators, customs officers, tugboat pilots and other key logistics links slot back into place.

“The turning point has arrived... We are seeing that port congestion has eased and logistics start to revive,” said Xu Kai, director of the Shipping Information Research Institute at SISI.

A shortage of truck drivers to ferry containers in and out of the port has caused crucial bottlenecks.

The city of Ningbo, which includes Zhoushan, has 24,000 registered container truck drivers, 95% of whom come from other regions, according to the Ningbo-Zhoushan port authority.

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