Global News Shippers face lengthy transshipping delays via Central America

Shippers are facing delays of up to four weeks in transshipping cargo through Central American and Caribbean ports due to tight vessel capacity and schedule disruption, carriers and freight forwarders say.

The problems, which have been exacerbated by disruption at US ports, have affected north-south, Asia-South America, and regional cargo shipments, shipping executives told JOC.com.

But some carriers expect the cargo crunch to ease in the next few weeks as port delays are resolved.

“We have cases where cargo is waiting for four weeks to be transshipped in Panama for onward shipment to northern Brazil, including Manaus," Carlos Fuchs, commercial director of Brazil freight forwarder Royal Cargo, told JOC.com. “We have identified difficulties in transshipment services at the ports of Balboa , Cristóbal, and Manzanillo.”

“I've heard some carriers are no longer accepting bookings from south China to Manaus until they can clear their cargo backlog in Panama,” Fuchs added. “This year, almost 70 percent of the cargo destinated for Manaus has been via Panama so it is affecting a lot of our clients in the region.”

Maersk said in a market update that feeder services connecting via Panama, northern Brazil, and the Caribbean were full and cargo was being rolled, although the carrier expected the situation to improve this month. Maersk spokesperson Rainer Horn added that schedule disruptions in the US Gulf were also causing congestion at terminals in Panama.

“Colleagues in Latin America confirm we have a backlog of cargo between Panama and Cartagena [Colombia], although they expect that the backlog should be cleared towards early October,” Horn told JOC.com. Labor shortages a factor Hapag-Lloyd said vessel schedule delays have affected the length of time containers stay in port waiting for onward connections.

“Sometimes containers have stayed more than 21 days waiting for connections,” Sergio Hurtado, regional operations senior vice president for Hapag-Lloyd South America, told JOC.com. “In the case of Panama, we had delays with cargo moving to North America and Venezuela, mainly.”

He said labor shortages due to COVID-19 was an added factor that affected port productivity, although the labor situation was much better at Latin American ports now than six months ago.

Manzanillo International Terminal (MIT) at Colon, Panama, confirmed cargo is being delayed, which it said is due to vessel schedule disruption.

“As with other terminals in the region, we keep dealing with longer cargo dwell times as a result of delayed vessel arrivals,” MIT spokesperson Juan Carlos Croston told JOC.com.

Panama Ports Company, controlled by Hong Kong’s Hutchison Ports, said its Balboa terminal was running well with plenty of capacity and no delays or yard congestion.

At Cristóbal, cargo connection times “depend largely on the way the shipping lines operate,” Alejandro Kouruklis, Hutchison Ports’ Panama director of government relations, told JOC.com.

“In PPC Cristobal, the majority of the services we handle are for [Mediterranean Shipping Co.] and it decides the trade routes and destination, including which terminals in Panama to call since it uses three terminals on the Atlantic side of Panama, as well as the priority of the cargo it carries,” Kouruklis said.

MSC told JOC.com it has no issues at its Panama hub.