Ships’ queues are building up at Chinese ports

by The Editorial Team

March 16, 2022

Ships are building up at important Chinese ports, as China’s policy for COVID-19 creates big concerns for the supply chains.

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Recalling that on Sunday, China announced that the lockdowns will affect 19 provinces reaching major industrial and port areas, including Shenzhen and sections of Shanghai, there are currently around 40m Chinese in lockdown.

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Currently, in Shenzhen the ports are operating normally. However, 17.5m people located at Shenzhen will have to stay at home until next Sunday because of the new imposed lockdown.

It is important to note that Shenzhen is the world’s fourth largest container port. Also, Shenzhen is one of the primary manufacturing zones for electronics. 90% of China’s electronics manufacturing comes from the region and passes through the port at Shenzhen.

At this moment. according to Refinitiv ship tracking data, there are 34 vessels off Shenzhen waiting to dock. At Qingdao, a northeastern Chinese port city, there are around 30 vessels waiting to dock compared to an average of seven last year. At the country’s two largest ports – Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan – there has also been a notable build-up in ships at anchor.

Yesterday, Maersk suggested that while ports in China continue to function normally, the problems lie on the landslide with the strict COVID-19 measures hampering trucking productivity.

All things considered the impact, for now, is clearly not as large as last year

…noted Lars Jensen, the CEO of Vespucci Maritime yesterday via LinkedIn

Let us hope it does not get worse than this (but zero-tolerance and the Omicron variant is not a happy mix…)

…Jensen added.