BARGES are turning into floating storage platforms to alleviate pressure on northern Europe's ocean terminals amidst surging congestion, reports London's Loadstar.
Rotterdam wait times have increased to almost seven days, while delays on inland services hit a near-five-year low around the 40-hour mark.
Wait times for barge handling had hit 163 hours for Rotterdam and 43 hours for Antwerp, with Contargo failing to explain the cause.
'The cause is two-fold - obviously, ocean-side congestion is having a knock-on impact, with yards and terminals well over capacity, in terms of storage, and now refusing to accept new boxes without evacuation of the backlog,' said a source.
'Barge owners are now being called in to fill their vessels with some 400 TEU of empties and find a way of connecting these to ocean carriers for evacuation.' said the source.
The source noted an owner was loading empties in Rotterdam before moving them to Antwerp and evacuating the empties from there.
'In Rotterdam, I don't think you can entirely blame the port; the team there is trying hard to reduce the backlog, but the wider supply chain issues have left them overloaded, with exports needing collection,' said the source.
'All of which isn't being helped by the other problem creating the congestion, which is down to some of the larger barge operators. They're arriving at these heavily congested terminals and, because of those they serve, they're being given access, taking up 50 metres of quay space to unload just 10 or 20 containers - time that could be better used loading the evacuations to reduce the wider problem.' said the source.
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Rotterdam wait times have increased to almost seven days, while delays on inland services hit a near-five-year low around the 40-hour mark.
Wait times for barge handling had hit 163 hours for Rotterdam and 43 hours for Antwerp, with Contargo failing to explain the cause.
'The cause is two-fold - obviously, ocean-side congestion is having a knock-on impact, with yards and terminals well over capacity, in terms of storage, and now refusing to accept new boxes without evacuation of the backlog,' said a source.
'Barge owners are now being called in to fill their vessels with some 400 TEU of empties and find a way of connecting these to ocean carriers for evacuation.' said the source.
The source noted an owner was loading empties in Rotterdam before moving them to Antwerp and evacuating the empties from there.
'In Rotterdam, I don't think you can entirely blame the port; the team there is trying hard to reduce the backlog, but the wider supply chain issues have left them overloaded, with exports needing collection,' said the source.
'All of which isn't being helped by the other problem creating the congestion, which is down to some of the larger barge operators. They're arriving at these heavily congested terminals and, because of those they serve, they're being given access, taking up 50 metres of quay space to unload just 10 or 20 containers - time that could be better used loading the evacuations to reduce the wider problem.' said the source.
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