Port Of Singapore Berthing Delays

Container ships calling at the normally highly efficient port of Singapore have faced berthing delays of up to seven days with total capacity waiting at dock rising to 450,000. As shipping lines divert traffic away from the Red Sea, the resulting diversion of vessels via the Cape of Good Hope had caused off-schedule arrivals and what it described as "vessel bunching". About 90 percent of the container ship traffic that once passed through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal now face voyages of thousands of miles longer than before because of the need to circumnavigate Africa.

This has led to the extra demand for bunkering and transshipment at the already-busy port of Singapore, as ships fuel up for a longer haul and offload the cargo that they would previously have delivered to the Mideast on the way to Suez. Singapore's container volume in the first five months of 2024 climbed nearly eight percent over the same period in 2023. Ship bunching and congestion has also spread to ports such as Shanghai, Qingdao and Shenzhen, with vessels waiting up to five days for a berthing slot in some ports.

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