Port Congestion Absorbs 2.3m TEU as Container Fleet Faces a Suez Reset
Schedule reliability fell 6.1 points in July to 56.4%, the sharpest monthly drop since January 2021
Port congestion is doing container shipping an unintended favour, absorbing 2.3m teu of vessel capacity at precisely the moment the trade is bracing for a heavy release of tonnage from newbuilding deliveries and a return to the Suez Canal.
Sea-Intelligence data shows that worsening delays have rendered 6.6% of the global containership fleet effectively unavailable, up sharply from around 5% in June and three times the pre-pandemic baseline of 2.2%. The 2.3m teu currently swallowed by delays would, as a standalone carrier, rank as the world's sixth largest, only marginally behind Hapag-Lloyd.
The deterioration has been rapid. Global schedule reliability fell 6.1 percentage points in July to 56.4%, the sharpest monthly decline since January 2021, and late ships were running an average of 6.06 days behind schedule, a level rarely seen outside the pandemic and the immediate aftermath of the Red Sea crisis.
Asia sits at the centre of the problem. All 14 of the region's busiest ports recorded deteriorating reliability in July, with successive typhoons compounding already stretched terminal networks. Shanghai's schedule reliability collapsed to 21%, Ningbo managed 34.6% and Singapore stood at 43.2%.
The figures line up with congestion measurements taken elsewhere in the market. Linerlytica calculated last week that more than 4.3m teu of containership capacity was waiting to berth worldwide, surpassing even the absolute covid-era peak, while Drewry has warned that global vessel waiting times have nearly doubled against 2019 as ports absorb increasingly concentrated waves of arrivals.
The squeeze can unwind quickly. Sea-Intelligence estimates that, based on previous congestion cycles, the current disruption would take around four-and-a-half to six months to return to the lows of June 2025, or two to three-and-a-half months to get back to end-2025 levels.
A much larger capacity release is taking shape behind it. Mediterranean Shipping Co, Maersk, CMA CGM and others are progressively returning services to Suez, with around 19% of Asia-Europe capacity now shifting back from the Cape route. Sea-Intelligence calculates that full Suez normalisation would produce an 8.7% year-on-year contraction in global head-haul teu-mile demand during the first half of 2027, even assuming underlying container demand growth of 6.6%. Even a 50% return to Suez would push teu-mile growth into negative territory.
That arithmetic matters with the containership orderbook standing at around 40% of the existing fleet. The share of capacity tied up in delays has risen every month this summer, and each increment is capacity that returns to the market the moment terminals catch up.
