China's thirst for raw materials is so strong that it is causing port congestion as far away as Australia, Brazil and West Africa.
In India, West Africa, South America and parts of Europe, terminals that handle raw materials are all seeing delays as China's massive exports and surging domestic consumption suck up a greater share of the world's resources.
At ports in India, ships must queue for a month to pick up iron ore cargoes en route to China, said Harash Channa, executive vice president of operations at the ship chartering unit of Hong Kong commodities trader Noble Group.
"It's clearly creating a chain reaction," he said.
Industry insiders say up to 25 percent of the world's bulk shipping capacity is now tied up in port queues.
The expense of such delays is massive. A 120,000-200,000 tonne "Capsize" carrier leases for up to $100,000 per day, so a month-long delay adds $3 million to the cost of each shipment.
The bottleneck is exacerbating already high prices for commodities such as steel, soybeans and oil, and triggered record high bulk freight rates for shipping lines and a construction backlog at the world's shipyards.
Industry insiders and analysts expect bottlenecks to worsen over the next two years before new ports and ships are built.
"Some of the ports are not anticipating the growth, and ports cannot be built overnight," said Dominique Lovichi, Vice President for Asia at France's CMA-CGM, the world's fifth-largest container liner.
Inefficient land transport links to China's ports are making it worse. Rail network capacity for moving coal is only 60 percent of demand, according to Chinese media reports.
In Australia, the world's top coal exporter, ships must wait up to 10 days before they can load.
Last year, China accounted for over 70 percent of the global increase in seaborne dry bulk trade, a Cazenove report said.
The worst congestion is in China, where overall port traffic rose 18 percent last year.
At Beilun port near Shanghai, one of China's major iron ore import terminals, ships must wait for up to a month to berth.
"What they are doing now is getting smaller ships to pick the cargoes from the bigger ships," Noble Group's Channa said.
China is expected to import 180 million tonnes of iron ore this year, up about 21 percent from last year to support the growth of its steel, car and other industries, which are fuelling an economy that grew at 9.1 percent last year.
Ironically, rising living standards in coastal Chinese cities are eroding the country's long-standing cheap labour advantage.
Port congestion was made worse during January's Lunar New Year holiday when dock workers declined to work overtime.
"In the past, if we paid them double, they would work. But this year nobody wanted to work. People are more affluent - they have much more money," Channa said.
Other big iron ore ports in Qingdao and Yantai have 15 or 16 ships waiting to unload cargoes, Channa said, helping to boost freight rates and steel prices.
China is investing massively in ports and infrastructure to handle the traffic. Shanghai is building a $12 billion container port on a nearby island, with planned capacity of 52 berths.
Congestion at China's southern boom town of Shenzhen has gradually eased, thanks to heavy overseas investment to double cargo handling capacity in the past two years.
Some port operators stand to gain from this growth.
Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, the world's largest container port operator, controls Zhenzhen's Yantian International Container Terminals, which handle nearly half of Shenzhen's throughput of 10.6 million TEUs.
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