The machinery of international maritime trade is seizing up again. Seven years after the logistical disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the fundamental arteries of global container transport are suffering from a chronic narrowing that has set off alarm bells in industry boardrooms. Global waiting times have almost doubled compared with 2019 levels, while the reliability of operating schedules is deteriorating rapidly.
Soaring waiting times and the underinvestment dispute
The dispute over responsibility has opened a rift between the major shipping lines and terminal operators. During the presentation of A.P. Moller-Maersk’s latest quarterly results, its CEO, Vincent Clerc, pointed directly to the inadequate development of landside infrastructure. According to the Danish giant’s position, the maritime ecosystem is still suffering the consequences of 15 years of underinvestment in container terminal capacity, which began after the 2008 financial crisis. This structural inaction allegedly left port facilities with little room for manoeuvre in the face of the vigorous increase in export flows from Asia.
Drewry dismantles the myth of a single infrastructure failure
However, the analysis provided by specialist consultancy Drewry paints a far more complex and nuanced picture of responsibility. Bottlenecks are not simply the result of a shortage of cranes or quay space, but of a business model shared by shipping lines and terminals that prioritises maximising financial returns and extreme asset optimisation at the expense of the supply chain’s operational resilience.
West Africa on the brink of collapse from operational saturation
Along the West African coast, saturation has reached critical thresholds. The region is suffering from the combined effects of historically inadequate landside infrastructure and a sudden trade imbalance caused by rising Asian imports. The average time container ships remain at terminals in the Gulf of Guinea has risen disproportionately compared with pre-2019 standards. As facilities operate at the limit of their installed capacity, any weather-related contingency or delay in berthing windows triggers a chain reaction. A terminal operating at 90% of capacity requires an entire week to absorb the consequences of a single day of disruption, compared with the two days needed at an occupancy level of 75%.
Santos and the strangulation of the South American giant
Meanwhile, Brazil’s port of Santos—the largest port complex in Latin America—has become South America’s textbook example of congestion. Unlike Asian hubs such as Singapore, where capacity expansion has kept pace with cargo growth, Santos is carrying a severe structural deficit. Comparative analyses show that, between 2019 and 2026, the global container volume handled by major trade hubs grew by 28%, while terminal capacity expanded by just 21% on average. In Santos, this mismatch has been compounded by repeated bureaucratic and regulatory delays in awarding the tender for the mega-terminal STS10, alongside the bottleneck posed by inland transport and relentless pressure from agricultural and industrial demand.
The reserve-capacity dilemma in private capital
Drewry’s diagnosis challenges the narrative of unilateral inaction. There is no widespread shortfall in private investment at global terminals, but rather an accounting logic under which no private actor is willing to bear alone the cost of maintaining idle reserve capacity to cushion demand peaks.
Shipping practices and the urgency of redefining the network
The tactical behaviour of the major shipping groups also forms part of this equation. The accelerated pursuit of profitability through the systematic cancellation of port calls (blank sailings), ad hoc schedule changes and the accumulation of next-generation megaships creates unpredictable surges of cargo at ports. These massive injections of containers over condensed periods of time ultimately overwhelm yards and multiply the time ships spend at anchor waiting for a berth.
Against this backdrop of permanent friction, congestion is no longer an episodic phenomenon caused by weather events in Asia or isolated blockages in strategic canals. The vulnerability of crucial nodes such as those in West Africa and the Santos hub shows that the global container transport system was designed to operate at minimum cost rather than absorb shocks. As long as shipping lines and operators continue to prioritise returns over network flexibility, the fog of congestion will continue to dominate the outlook for global trade.
The article The Container Crisis in the Canary Islands: West Africa and Santos Expose 15 Years of Underinvestment in Ports was first published on canarymaritime.com.
