Extreme weather, particularly typhoons and hurricanes in North Asia and the United States, resulted in congestion building up in major ports.

Linerlytica’s report today stated that vessel queues went up in the week that ended on 10 September.

North Asia, particularly, had been battered by heavy rain amid the typhoon season, with Super Typhoon Saola, Typhoon Khanun and Typhoon Haikui hitting China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Linerlytica estimates that around 400,000 TEUs were in the vessel queue in ports in each region of North Asia and North America, where Florida state was lashed by Hurricane Idalia.

Ships had to wait up to three days to berth, due to the disruptions to port operations in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kaohsiung, Ningbo and Busan.

However, the congestion has already started to clear in North Asia by the end of last week with terminals and gate operations all reported to be back to normal.

In North America, there has been a build up across the East Coast with wait times of up to four days with Savannah, Norfolk, Baltimore and Charleston currently the worst hit.

However, with shipping supply exceeding demand, the bottlenecks have not halted the downward slide in freight rates. On 8 September, the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI) fell below the 1,000 mark again, losing all gains in the previous seven weeks.