There are significant delays at Liverpool Port as port operations slowed under the pressure of sudden and significant increases in containers arriving in. The road congestion began on Thursday 28th, with trucks taking a total of 7-8 hours to retrieve their containers from the terminal after entering the queue. However, while the port had been making progress in working through the backlog, there was a power outage on the afternoon of Tuesday 31st, resulting in several lost hours. The waiting time has been increased again to a total of 9 hours.
This said, the Port of Liverpool has extended their operation hours and bolstered various activities, also catering to the drivers through provision of additional facilities, free warm snacks, supply of water, etc.
Various stakeholders are still expecting that the backlog will be cleared by Monday 6th August.
These issues arose as Liverpool Port began to receive vessels carrying containers that had been destined for Felixstowe Port, but due to issues and berthing congestion were forced to consider alternatives. Truck collections from the port have resulted in long queues, late and failed deliveries. Pictures below.
Ultimately, this has been caused by the container-throughput issues at Felixstowe Port after implementing Hutchinson Port’s new management system.
Felixstowe Port’s diminished speed of both off-/loading containers from vessels and loading them on to trucks has led to vessel congestion across Northern Europe. In response to this many vessels have had to off-load containers at other European Ports, leaving the final move to Port of Destination to a feeder vessel. Other carriers have opted to divert vessels to other UK Ports, Southampton, London Gateway & Liverpool which has had knock on affects in terms of resource as these ports experience a significant spike in volume.
Reports from Felixstowe continue to show improvement with figures suggesting a return to 80% of capacity having been down to just 50% directly after the launch of the new software!
We continue to monitor the situation and work hard behind the scenes to limit the effects this has on our customers.
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