HGV driver crisis forces cargo ships to divert from UK

October 18, 2021

Cargo ships were forced to divert from the UK due to a backlog of containers. This threatens delays, especially as the pre-Christmas trade rush approaches.

Dwell times for containers at Felixstowe, the UK’s largest commercial port, have almost doubled over the past fortnight.

A spokesperson for the port said: “The pre-Christmas peak, combined with haulage shortages, congested inland terminals, poor vessel schedule reliability and the pandemic, has resulted in a build-up of containers at the port.

“The vast majority of import containers are cleared for collection within minutes of arriving and there are over 1,000 unused haulier bookings most days.

“However, the situation is improving and there is more spare space for import containers this week than at any time since the beginning of July when supply chain impacts first started to bite.”

They added: “We are working closely with all our shipping lines customers to accommodate their vessels. This can be challenging as a high proportion of ships are off schedule due to the well-publicised global supply chain issues and imports continue to arrive faster than the UK supply chain can handle them due to the well documented haulier shortage.

“As a result, and on occasions, we understand and regret lines have to prioritise the services they have.”

Maersk said it was rerouting one 80,000-tonne container ship per week from Felixstowe to unload elsewhere in Europe.

Maersk’s global ocean network Chief Lars Mikael Jensen earlier told the Financial Times: “We had to stop operations on a ship because there was nowhere to discharge the containers. Felixstowe is among the top two or three worst-hit terminals,”

“We are having to deviate some of the bigger ships away from Felixstowe and relay some of the smaller ships for the cargo.

“We did it for a little while over the summer and now we’re starting to do it again.”

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