SIMIC

Bottlenecks have been created at those facilities that will make the US East Coast "the next hot spot for terribly high congestion," said Peter Sand, chief analyst at rate benchmarking platform Xeneta.

Ports on the US East Coast have been battling waves of congestion for the past year, with overwhelmed terminals leading to intermittent vessel backlogs outside the ports of Charleston, Savannah, New York and New Jersey, and Virginia.

US consumer demand continues to drive record import volumes as a much-heralded shift in spending from goods to services has failed to materialise. Data show US retail sales in January increased 4.9 per cent year over year, while retail inventories in December, the latest available data, rose 3.7 per cent year over year, according to data provider Trading Economics.

US imports from North Europe in February grew 11.4 per cent year over year to 141,482 TEU in February after rising 9 per cent for the full year in 2021, according to data from PIERS.

On top of the sustained import demand, almost two years of disruption at choked West Coast ports has led to shippers shifting calls to the East Coast, adding to the mounting congestion.

Congestion has been further compounded in recent weeks by unpredictable Covid-19 lockdowns in China that delay vessels at origin and destroy their on-time performance at destination. This creates surges in vessel arrivals that overwhelm container terminals.

Asbjorn Kops, head of network and market for Atlantic and Mediterranean at Maersk said Russia's invasion of Ukraine has also complicated matters for ports on both sides of the Atlantic, but the war in Europe was just one of many factors contributing to disruption.

"You see terminal efficiency impacted by the many Russia boxes waiting in Northern Europe yards but even without that we would have problems," he said. "Things are increasingly complicated on the US East Coast and in Europe, but it is not that different compared to 2021."

Maersk took several ports out of each of its trans-Atlantic strings in anticipation that the situation would deteriorate during winter, and Mr Kops said that in fact improved the carrier's reliability compared with the first half of 2021.

However, rising yard density in North Europe hubs following the cancellation of Russia services in February has affected schedules, "and will continue to do so for some time to come," Mr Kops said, adding that in the Mediterranean, Maersk was making dynamic adjustments to schedules through ad hoc port omissions.

"We expect things to gradually improve in the Mediterranean-US East Coast market as we put winter behind us, but due to continued congestion on the US East Coast, the improvement will be slow," he said.