Last week, the MV Shanghai skipped Colombo’s port. It became yet another ship dropping Sri Lanka as a result of port congestion. On the back of rising demand, due to events like the Red Sea crisis and the Indo-Pakistan war, Colombo’s congestion is now a chronic problem.
The losses are not confined to the port. For the apparel trade, which runs on just-in-time supply chains, a missed call can halt production. Fazil Mohamed, at apparel maker Timex, says they’re “stopping production at two factories this Saturday” while they wait for the fabric which was on MV Shanghai. They sometimes “air freight garments because of these delays”, often turning a profitable order into a loss.
The Examiner learns that Brandix was also affected last week.
The problem is getting worse. As Yohan Lawrence of the Exporters’ Association points out, “these days every six weeks a vessel skips Colombo” because of congestion.
Delayed infrastructure = delayed ships
Experts trace the congestion to four causes: too little yard space, traffic jams inside the port, a shortage of tugs, and delays in bringing the east terminal online.
“The yards are full,” says U. Kumara, the ports authority’s spokesman. With recent regional crises, shipping lines are discharging ever more containers at Colombo. The containers wait, sometimes for weeks, for onward vessels. As transhipment cargo is not subject to customs inspection they cannot leave the port, instead piling up in the container yards next to the terminals.
Meanwhile, import containers held up by customs also linger in the yards, resulting in less space for transhipment boxes. Sean Van Dort, of the Shippers’ Council, says “import containers should leave the port within 24 hours.” Ideally, they should be transported via a secure corridor, such as the port access highway, to an inland dry port, where customs can then process them.
He also argues that underutilised port land could be repurposed: “cement and grain shipping can be shifted to Hambantota.” The Navy’s Western Command must also be relocated, he believes. Keeping it at the port’s heart is “a white elephant like the Lotus Tower.”
Traffic jams within the port also cause delays as they prevent lorries from transporting transshipment containers from their arrival terminal to their departure terminal. Mevan Samarasekara, of Califolink, an inter-terminal trucking operator, says “on weekends and after 10pm on weekdays each truck can make fifteen to seventeen trips.” But on weekdays from morning to evening, this number is only twelve because there’s heavy traffic due to port congestion from import-export trucks.
These jams arise from customs delays and inefficient procedures sending a “ripple effect on port operations”, according to the freight forwarders association’s Channa Gunawardena.
Delays leave ships idle, and idle ships cost between $30,000 and $60,000 per day.
The Jaya container terminal yard, tug boats, and terminal gates. Sources: Maritime Gateway, SLPA, Google Maps
The ports authority is trying to ease the logjam by building gates between terminals. It also expects the long overdue port access highway and an AI inter-terminal trucking system to help, says Kumara.
The east and west terminals recently coming online can work as another solution to the traffic jams in time. “They can help cut down on container trucking between terminals,” he says. Large ships and their feeders will increasingly dock at the same quay, so containers need not be transported by land. Until recently only one terminal, CICT, could handle such relay operations.
Tug boats are another pinch point. Docking a ship in Colombo often takes “two or three times Singapore”, says one veteran. The ports authority, which monopolises navigation, owns too few tugs. Tenders for new vessels have been pending for six months. SLPA spokesman Kumara says tender documents are ready and the tender will be out “very soon”.
