International Longshoremen’s Association’s (ILA’s) strike at the United States East Coast ports has already started affecting shipping operations.
While much of the current speculation focuses on the potential duration of the strike, Danish maritime data analysis firm Sea-Intelligence has taken a different approach by examining the impact that the strike’s length could have on the global shipping fleet and weekly capacity in terms of TEUs.
At present, shipping lines are deploying full capacity across 62 deep-sea services. However, unless the industrial dispute is resolved swiftly and unexpectedly, these vessels will be forced to wait at anchor at the first port of call on their discharge schedule.
Additionally, some ships that have already started their discharge rotation will be delayed at their second, third, or even fourth port of call, depending on how far along they were before the strike began.
The figure illustrates both the vessels currently stuck at US East Coast ports and those scheduled to arrive this week. The chart compares the weekly loss of capacity and the cumulative percentage of the global fleet these losses represent.
Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence, explains: “In the first week, the capacity loss is at its highest (around 775,000 TEUs) due to the vessels already stuck on the US East Coast plus the incoming vessels with the subsequent three weeks showing a loss of around 443,000 TEUs as only the ‘new’ arrivals are being counted.”
Murphy continues, “Should the strike last four weeks, causing almost 7% of the global fleet to be tied up along the US East Coast, the overall impact on the supply and demand equation will be very significant.”
