MasContairner highlights that since the appearance of the Covid-19 pandemic, maritime transport has continued to experience disruptions, which has resulted in long delays in the arrival of merchandise at its final destination by sea. Although the situation in terminals and intermodal services tended to stabilize towards the end of 2021, the truth is that it is already at new peaks. The situation continues to worsen, mainly in the United States and Europe.

Thus, according to a study carried out by Flexport, in transpacific connections a container took between 45 and 50 days to complete the journey to the port of destination, but according to the last measurement, carried out on January 2, 2022, now the average is 110 days.

Port congestion and bottlenecks that are occurring in ports are problems that, far from disappearing, are even getting worse. In fact, the situation on the routes between Asia and Europe is very similar, having gone from an average of between 55 and 60 days to the current 108.

This strong increase in transit times has also increased the demand for containers by a similar proportion. In this sense, while before the pandemic around 2% of container ship capacity could suffer delivery delays, the figure has now risen to 11% according to Sea-Intelligence.

For its part, a report by the Jefferies banking entity ensures that port congestion and inefficiencies will continue to be the usual trend as a result of the reduction in the speed of ships, diversions to other ports, containers that remain stuck and are not circulating, and increased discharge times.

The Covid-19, for its part, will continue to boost citizen spending on new items and shipping rates could break a new record in the coming weeks.