What is happening

In Banjul, Douala, and Mombasa –to name only a few African ports– vessels are waiting sometimes more than a week at anchorage outside the port before being able to berth and start operations, in Africa this is something common but of course, due to pandemic and global slowdown in logistics’ supply chain, the situation is far from improving and is expected to continue for a while.

The case of Nigeria is another well-known example, Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa but due to long days/weeks of waiting time for vessels before berthing, road congestion in/out of the port, poor logistic infrastructure, and lack of automatization, especially in Lagos area, there are millions of dollars that are lost every day by all players and having a negative impact on competitivity and price for the final consumer.

A huge challenge

Although there is an important imbalance between imports and exports in mainly all African countries, as these countries import much more than what they export, there is traditionally in Africa an important quantity of containers to be repositioned empty to shortage areas like Asia or Europe, today we see that the lack of containers is affecting the whole world due to a slowdown in all the logistic chain.

Traditionally shipping lines apply congestion surcharges (generally known as CGS surcharge) and many other like imbalance surcharges, peak season surcharges on top of freight rates to compensate the huge amounts lost while waiting at anchorage but today this surcharge continues to be added on top of the very high current freight rates.

Another factor that has a huge impact on the logistic costs is the freight indeed, ocean freight rates are today at levels never seen in over 20 years and considering that there are around 30’000 vessels in service and the time needed to build new ones, the situation is expected to continue at least until 2023. Rates with 4 zeros are not rare today and from Asia, we started to see rates of USD 20’000 to some regions … This situation is forcing clients to look for alternative sourcing areas where freight rates are a bit lower.

At ACS we can offer services from any port in the world to any port in the world thanks to our wide network of partners.

Below are some current images that speak for themselves showing the number of vessels in some African ports as well as a global image of the world situation

At ACS we help you track your cargo from A to Z, don’t hesitate to consult our tracking system

**In green = cargo vessels container and bulk
***In red = oil/chemical tankers