Operators say ports severely congested because of Red Sea disruptions.
Container ports around the western Mediterranean are nearing full capacity, raising the risk of higher inventory costs and component shortages for Europe’s retailers and manufacturers in the latest challenge to the region’s supply chains.
Port executives said they were dealing with overflowing storage yards and waits for vessels to berth following Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which has led to a surge in traffic at Algeciras and Barcelona in Spain and Tangier-Med in Morocco.
Denmark’s Maersk recently warned customers that “yard density” at the Port of Barcelona had increased due to high capacity as the port handled far higher than normal trans-shipment movements. Maersk added that terminals in Algeciras and Tangier were also suffering.
Alonso Luque, chief executive of TTI Algeciras, one of two container terminals in Algeciras, said his facility was “quite full” and had avoided severe congestion only by restricting the amount of business it took on.
“Capacity is very limited,” he said.
Most large container shipping lines operating on the Asia-Europe route redirected traffic via the Cape of Good Hope, instead of the Suez Canal, following attacks by Iranian-backed Houthis.
The re-routings have forced shipping lines to devise new arrangements for goods going between Asia and ports in Italy, Greece and Turkey.
After coming around South Africa, many vessels are dropping off containers at ports on the western side of the Mediterranean such as Algeciras and Tangier. From there, short-distance “feeder” services ferry goods to other southern European terminals.
The disruption has arisen as critical ports have struggled to cope with the resulting sharp increases in “trans-shipment” traffic. Daniel Richards, a director at London-based maritime consultancy MSI, said delays at the ports could force some companies to hold extra stock.
“[One element] would be if you have inventory costs rising because of this,” Richards said, adding that there was also a risk to the supply of components for manufacturers.
The issues arise as terminals for handling finished cars are also suffering severe congestion, largely because of a surge in the number of vehicles being exported from Asia to Europe and North America and a slowdown in vehicle sales.
While Algeciras and Tangier-Med have published no traffic statistics this year, Barcelona recorded a 17 per cent rise in containers handled in February compared with the same month last year.
Many terminal operators expect that problems will continue for as long as services are being rerouted.
Nabil Boumezzough, president of the management board of Tangier Alliance, operator of the TC3 container terminal in Morocco, said the terminal had this year been operating consistently with its yard nearly full to capacity.
“This is challenging your efficiency and challenging your productivity and challenging how you manage your port,” Boumezzough said.
APM Terminals, the terminal-operating arm of AP Møller-Maersk, said it had been experiencing “short-term pressure” on its facilities in Barcelona, Algeciras and Tangier, although it was now seeing “significant improvements”.
However, vessel-tracking services show that vessels are regularly waiting at anchor offshore at both Algeciras and Tangier before berthing. Such waits are often a sign ports are growing congested.
Luque said shipping lines had been forced by the shortage of capacity at Algeciras and Tangier, which sit on opposite sides of the Gibraltar Strait, to go to less convenient ports farther away.
He said lines were using facilities as far away as Malta and Italy’s Gioia Tauro.
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