Europe's biggest ports face increasing chaotic congestion and delays in deliveries as they have failed to expand quickly enough to handle booming container imports from Asia.
Europe's busiest port of Rotterdam, Hamburg in Germany and Felixstowe and Southampton in Britain have all had to return container ships this year due to lack of docking space, industry officials said.
Barge operators are facing delays in Rotterdam and Europe's second biggest port of Antwerp in Belgium, with the waiting time reaching over two days in the Netherlands last week. Trucks which carry containers inland queue for hours in Rotterdam.
Industry officials believe that the only remedy for congestion is to expand terminal capacity to cope with booming exports of manufactured goods from China. But expansion projects are not moving fast enough to keep up with the trade flow.
"The future doesn't look very bright for container shipping at Europe's biggest ports," Johan Blinde, manager operations at Hanjin Shipping's Dutch office, told Reuters.
According to data from Europe's association for transport, logistic and customs services CLECAT, container shipping is expected to grow 7.8 percent per year between 2005 and 2011, while European port capacity is seen rising by only 4.2 percent.
Congestion at west European ports was not as alarming as in some US, Asian or Russian ports, CLECAT said, but warned that the trend was unlikely to slow in the near future because of expected traffic increase.
In the first quarter of 2007, 73 percent of container ships arrived late in European ports, up from 45 percent in the same period last year, showed data from Drewry Shipping Consultants. "The Far East trade is booming. We have so much volume to handle... that sometimes we have significant delays," said Jan Westerhoud, president of ECT, the main container terminal operator at Rotterdam's port.
Rotterdam saw a 15-percent growth in container cargo in 2004 and 2005 as the world economy grew more dependent on the 20- or 40-foot steel boxes which help lower transport costs but require new infrastructure, deep-water docks and more storage space.
The rise in container volume slowed to 4 percent in Rotterdam last year but jumped 10 percent in the first months of this year, while Antwerp registered an 18-percent growth in the first quarter.
Hamburg, Europe's second-biggest container port, reported a 9.6 percent increase last year. To cope with the trade flow from Asia, ECT is building new barge and container terminals in Rotterdam but construction has been delayed and the two facilities will be fully operational in the second half of 2008 and in early 2009, respectively.
The Rotterdam port plans a major 2.8 billion euro ($3.72 billion) investment to add 10 percent of reclaimed sea land to its existing 10,500 hectares. The project, which was initially expected to kick off in 2002, has been delayed until 2008 with completion expected in 2012, due to court battles over environmental concerns.
Shippers said new capacity was needed much sooner. "It's far too late," said Hanjin's Blinde. "They have been talking about expansion for years and years but nothing is really happening in practice," said a Rotterdam-based official with China Shipping Agency.
Rotterdam, which is the only European port that can handle over 10 million 20-foot container units per year, plans to add 4.5 million in new capacity between 2008 and 2013. This compared with about 25 million units handled by the world's busiest container port of Singapore. Antwerp's expansion also was delayed by environmental protests and the port added a new container dock in 2005, several years later than planned. The construction of a second dock has been pushed back to 2009.
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