Shanghai port under epidemic risk control: Ships are not blocked, but cargo cannot be transported - part 1

Shanghai is facing a severe epidemic situation recently. As the world's largest container port (Shanghai port), the operation of container cargo in Shanghai has been directly affected.

According to a notice issued by the administration of road transport, Shanghai on March 29, involves the Shanghai port container transport vehicles, must hold on electronic quarantine issued by the port group of pass, and get a pass condition is that the container truck drivers (hereinafter referred to as the set card driver) at the same time hold within 48 hours of nucleic acid testing negative certificate and antigen test negative within 24 hours.
Several freight logistics company employees told China Newsweek that during the lockdown period, container truck freight was basically in a "semi-paralyzed state," making it difficult for vehicles to enter Shanghai, and even if they did enter, it was difficult to get out.
Lin hao (a pseudonym) is a large international shipping company staff, he told China newsweek, his company most business have ground to a halt, "a lot of container yard (for delivery and storage container) personnel, sets are traffic control in residence card driver, lead to the lack of empty containers transport vehicles, yard can only complete the suitcase, of return business".

Transocetic freight is blocked

It is understood that pudong, Punan and their adjacent areas are the areas where warehouses and logistics enterprises in Shanghai are concentrated. Pudong is the core area of Shanghai's international shipping and trade center. It is also home to important logistics hubs such as Shanghai Container Terminal - Waigaoqiao Port Area (a deep-water port area integrating domestic and foreign trade with the third and fourth generation of international containers) and Yangshan Port Area.

As one of the busiest ports in the world, Shanghai's container throughput exceeded 47 million teUS in 2021, ranking first in the world for 12 consecutive years. According to the notice of SIPG, all production units in Hong Kong will operate 24 hours a day unless affected by extreme inclement weather.
Sipg announced on April 2 that according to internal data monitoring, the current operation of Shanghai Port is stable and orderly, and the berthing efficiency of Shanghai Port is significantly better than the overall level in 2021. Since March 28, the average waiting time for container ships at The Port of Shanghai is less than 24 hours, and the average waiting time for ships is less than 10. Sipg stressed that production operations at the terminal were normal and container ships had not been congested.

China Newsweek noted that although the lockdown does not close ports, freight efficiency is still greatly affected. A number of shipping professionals told China Newsweek that the epidemic has caused port workers and card drivers to move in and out less smoothly than before, resulting in delayed shipment. At the same time, most of the goods in Shanghai port come from the Yangtze River Delta region, not from local factories in Shanghai. There are few local freight drivers in Shanghai, so the trans-provincial freight of jika has been directly affected.
Zhang Yang, head of SIPG's Jiangsu branch, told China Newsweek that siPG currently operates a closed-loop personnel management system, and ships docking and connecting at the port are still normal. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, collection card transport will be a certain drag.
Lin hao's company is located in Pudong. In an interview with China Newsweek on The afternoon of April 1, he said that he had not yet received any notice to release the containers, and that most of the company's container inspection personnel and card drivers were still locked in their places of residence, and much work was still at a standstill.

"A lot of the work of the yard requires on-site operation, such as driving the stacker (various wheeled handling vehicles), collecting truck trailers, etc." Lin hao said that the lack of tow truck personnel at the yard has led to many empty imported containers stuck in the dock and unable to be towed to the yard in time, or even if towed to the yard, they cannot be repaired.

"The company can barely support export demand with the container stock and manpower in its yard, but it may run short of containers if it wants to continue containment. In addition, we need to purchase materials from other places (in China) in advance for inspection and repair. Now some yards are short of welding materials, even if there are manpower, they can't do inspection and repair." He said.
As the epidemic continues to be severe in Shanghai, traffic control has been further tightened. Currently, the anti-epidemic pass issued by SIPG requires both a negative electronic nucleic acid test within 48 hours and a negative antigen test within 24 hours (if a negative nucleic acid test within 24 hours can be provided, the antigen test certificate is not required).

A freight company staff in Pudong, Shanghai, said that in fact, it is not necessary for drivers to have negative nucleic acid certificates. Many communities are now locked down and residents cannot travel, including drivers. Another shipping agent working in Puxi told China Newsweek that he has been quarantined at home since March 28, unable to receive goods.

However, Gong Jianwei, an assistant researcher at the Shanghai International Shipping Research Center, told China Newsweek that container shipping in Shanghai would not be affected. Now more of the problem is out of Shanghai, especially the Yangtze River Delta region of many places to Shanghai to take direct vehicles return.

It is understood that from March 28, jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui provinces in a number of areas of the high-speed exit of Shanghai vehicle control measures to upgrade, Tongling, Zhuji, Zhenjiang, Danyang and other places directly to return, Xianju is from Shanghai set card drivers under the implementation of the highway after direct isolation.

Lin Hao's company has containers in Taicang. As far as he knows, the drivers of collecting cards can still travel to And from Shanghai from March 28 to 29. After arriving in Shanghai, they will first deliver the boxes and then take a nucleic acid test. But now taicang's drivers can no longer travel to Shanghai.
Wang Hai, shipping industry analyst and chief editor of The shipping industry website, said containment measures will inevitably have an impact on container transportation and container turnover. Some container shipping companies have also taken measures to reduce the number of vessels calling at Shanghai port and suspend warehouse operations in the city.

Reduced efficiency may lead to congestion at ports and reduced container throughput. "Sipg is doing its best to ensure round-the-clock operation," he said. "Drivers will continue to work through nucleic acid tests."
Zhang Yang predicted that it would take some time for container operations to be unsealed, "at least 3-4 weeks".

Replacing land with water and iron will ease the pressure on road freight

"The impact of the lockdown on Shanghai's ports and logistics mainly focuses on land-based collection and distribution, especially the collection and distribution of cards. After Shanghai and SIPG opened a green channel for collection and distribution card drivers, I think the impact is limited and controllable." Gong jianwei said.

He introduced that the whole port collection and distribution system is generally divided into land side and water side, the land side mainly includes roads and railways, at present, Shanghai port ships "jump port" (that is, do not stop at Shanghai, in the surrounding ports up and down) situation is rare, sealing control is the biggest impact on road transport.

It is reported that it takes several hours for one cargo carrier to queue up at Shanghai port to pick up the container; After queuing, we go to the factory for packing, and it takes several hours to install a container. It takes at least half a day for this process to come down.

Even if the packing is successful, in the process of road transportation, there will be many checkpoints, each checkpoint will have relevant personnel for antigen screening, and one antigen detection will take more than ten minutes at the fastest. Each driver needs more than ten minutes, which will lead to the blockage of the collection card vehicles.

In addition, workers entering factories to load and unload goods, as well as the need for antigen testing of goods sources and truck drivers, can lead to a significant decrease in road freight efficiency.

"With the tightening of quarantine policies in various regions, the time cost of collecting and transporting cards is getting higher and higher." Zhang Yang said, for example, traditional truck transport vehicles from Shanghai "carry" empty containers to Nanjing, Zhenjiang and other places to pack and transport, this must go through Wuxi, Suzhou, Changzhou and other places, due to the different epidemic situation, freight vehicles may be blocked.

In order to alleviate the pressure of road transport resources shortage in Shanghai port caused by the epidemic, SIPG launched the "land to water" container service, covering all ports in Yangshan area and Waigaoqiao area of Shanghai Port to relevant ports in the Yangtze River and Yangtze River Delta region.

In addition to land transport, there are also railway transport and water (boat) transport to Shanghai port, the latter includes the Yangtze River channel, southern Jiangsu and some river transport in northern Jiangsu. Zhang Yang said siPG's "land instead of water" and "land instead of rail" modes can ease the pressure of cargo transportation, as road and truck transportation are relatively difficult at present.

The advantage of water transport is that it is a closed-loop operation, so shippers do not have to disembark when they transport containers to the dock, and each ship can transport 200 or 300 containers at a time.

Gong jianwei said that "replacing land with water" and "replacing land with iron" is trying to make up for the shortage of third-party transportation. In addition, SIPG also promotes sea-rail combined transportation, which reaches the container yard of Shanghai port (mainly Luchao Port) by rail, and then the goods are transported by the internal collection card of SIPG, without the intervention of external drivers.

The number of ships lining up near Shanghai recently increased fivefold in two and a half weeks, but there hasn't been a big increase in container ship queues, according to publicly available data from VesselsValue, a shipping data provider.