The world’s largest traffic jam is about to slow things down even more for Boston.
Even though the Port of Boston isn’t facing a backlog of container ships like other major US ports, cargo from China has been arriving up to a month late. And soon, for a couple of months, it won’t be arriving at all, as a major shipping line has decided to temporarily bypass Boston’s newly remodeled container port.
During their Thursday board meeting, Massachusetts Port Authority officials said some ships from China have been arriving at the Conley Container Terminal up to 30 days behind schedule, because of delays at other seaports. That’s a major headache for New England retailers and others looking to stock up on imported goods for the holiday shopping season.
Then on Friday, Massport spokeswoman Jennifer Mehigan said that the Ocean Alliance, a shipping consortium that normally sends one container ship per week from Asia to Boston, will pause its visits to the port from late November to the end of January, in a bid to speed up deliveries throughout its network.
“As part of the supply chain crisis, the carriers are looking to save time wherever they can,” said Mehigan. “To do that, a temporary measure is to bypass ports like Boston.”
In other words, Boston will be taking one for the team in this global shipping crisis.
Normally, the weekly Ocean Alliance vessel sails north from Charleston, S.C., to Boston, then heads south to the Port of New York. Instead, it will go straight to New York, skipping the Boston visit. This will cut hundreds of miles from its usual route, saving several days of travel and port time, but it will also mean waiting for an open berth at New York’s already crowded port. Still, Mehigan said the Ocean Alliance believes the elimination of the Boston stop will speed up its deliveries in the long run.
The Ocean Alliance ships carry large quantities of Asian-made furniture and clothing, among other products. But the New England companies that rely on these imports will still get their merchandise, she said.
“The cargo will still be imported into the US at a different port and will have to be trucked into New England,” Mehigan said. (It’s unclear how much of an additional delay this will cause locally.)
Mehigan said that Boston port officials suggested an alternative approach: offloading more cargo at the Port of Boston, as a way to bypass the larger and more crowded East Coast ports. “We’re ready. We’ve made this investment. We’re congestion-free,” she said. But Ocean Alliance wasn’t persuaded. Mehigan added that the shipping halt is temporary, and service should resume in early February.
Ocean Alliance officials did not respond to requests for comment.
A multitude of factors have combined to cause the shipping bottleneck. In August, the Chinese port of Ningbo, one of the world’s largest, was shut down for two weeks to stamp out a COVID-19 outbreak among dock workers. Ports around the globe are still feeling the effects of this delay.
Once the port resumed operation, “there was a huge wave of ships that came rushing to the East Coast,” said Port of Boston director Michael Meyran.
This is one reason for the vast backups outside the ports of Savannah, Ga., Charleston, and New York. But these traffic jams cause extra delays for the Boston-bound ships from Asia, which are scheduled to stop at Savannah and Charleston before heading north. As a result, the trip, which used to take 30 days, has recently taken as long as 60 days.
Hauke Kite-Powell, senior analyst at Marsoft, a Boston-based maritime research firm, said that the COVID pandemic spawned a huge surge in US demand for imported goods that caught shippers and seaports unprepared.
“What we’re trying to do is to jam 20 percent or 30 percent more cargo through a transportation system that was already stretched fairly thin,” Kite-Powell said.
The news may not be all bad for the local port. Meyran said the three new giant cranes recently installed at the Conley terminal are up and running. Once tests of the cranes are complete, Boston’s seaport will be able to handle huge cargo ships capable of carrying up to 14,500 standard shipping containers.
In addition, Meyran said the terminal has sufficient capacity to handle twice as much ship traffic as it did prior to the pandemic. Massport hopes to use this additional capacity to persuade a shipping company to begin weekly service between Boston and markets in southeast Asia, such as Vietnam and Thailand.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.
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October 23, 2021 at 04:11AM
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Late-arriving cargo ships plague Port of Boston, and soon there will be fewer of them - BetaBoston
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