Port congestion is likely the single most important cause for disruptions in ocean trade. Yet, despite its prominence as a constant pain to logistics operators, it is rarely used as a means to estimate delays to existing routes. 

That is why we decided to take matters into our own hands and build a framework that can leverage existing data on port congestions to find just how likely it is that a shipment will make it on time. Our findings suggests that, for the case benign studied, top carriers could experience delays equivalent to between 20.6 and 49.7 days just from port congestion alone as of the time of writing. And any additional stop to a route—at least in this specific case study—could account for an additional delay of up to 4.1 days.

Before looking at the data behind these numbers, it is important to understand a key point behind the structure of maritime transportation. When you are sending a container from one port to another, it will very rarely arrive at its end destination without making a number of stops along the way. Quite the opposite, container ships travel with a fixed schedule of stops set  by the ocean carrier who operates them. So, at times, you might encounter express routes connecting the port of Shanghai to L.A. directly, but, more frequently, that same vessel will stop in Busan, South Korea or Yokohama, Japan, along the way—not to mention additional stops in Portland or Seattle. So delays at any one of those ports will also have an impact on the end destination.

Now, there is no standardized data set on the ocean routes of top carriers—and when that data does exist, it is often limited to the start and end of each route. To address this issue, we decided to make a dataset on our own by looking at all publicly listed ocean routes for five of the largest carriers in existence, namely: Maersk, CMA CGM, COSCO, Hapag-Lloyd, and MSC. Together, these five companies alone operate 64.5% of all containers at sea, making them a highly representative sample for an initial study.

Furthermore, we focused our exploration to routes containing Mexico. This, in part, due to the country’s rising prominence in global trade, as Western countries seek to replace China as a manufacturing partner. We had done an initial dataset of similar routes earlier this year, but expanded it for this exploration. For each route, we recorded every port listed by carriers as well as the expected time the entire route should take from beginning to end.

Top Carrier Routes

In all, our dataset includes 85 ocean routes from the carriers listed. Although, it is worth noting that each carrier had different amounts of routes that included Mexico. Maersk had the most by far, accounting for 29% of our data, followed by MSC and Hapad Lloyg with 21% each. The average route in our dataset consisted of 7.7 stops at different ports (including the start and end points).

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In terms of geographic split, we were able to account for 102 ports connected to Mexico via ocean trade. The map below plots the coordinates for all the ports in our dataset with the size of each dot representing the number of routes that port has leading to Mexico. Interestingly, the port of Busan had the most routes leading to a Mexican port with 26 across our dataset. It was followed by Houston (20 routes to Mexico) and the ports of Balboa, Panama (19 routes) and Shanghai (19 routes).

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Port Wait Times

Having this dataset of routes, we then looked at current estimates of wait times for the ports leading to Mexico as well as those currently recorded in Mexican ports. The map below shows current wait times at each of the 102 ports considered in this study, with the size of each dot representing the days currently predicted a vessel will have to wait before entering the port.

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We then merged the data from current ocean routes to/from Mexico with the wait times expected at all the ports mentioned in the route’s official description—basically adding the wait times for all ports in a route. This allowed us to contrast the predicted length of the route by carriers with the additional delays one could expect from current congestions.

In all, we found that there is a large discrepancy between the initial quotation of length and the additional delays containerships are likely to experience at the ports along its route. In all, we found that the average port in the routes considered has a delay of about 4.18 days. This number is close to current estimates for global delays, which indicate the average shipment arrives late to a port by about 5.19 days. Since the average route in our dataset has 7.7 stops, this implies an additional 32 days to complete the average route in our dataset as of the time of writing.

It is worth noting that these trends vary significantly by carrier. In the figure below, we plotted the average days it takes to complete the routes that each carrier has connecting Mexico with the rest of the world. On top of these times, we included the average delays due to port congestion given the ports at which each carrier stops along the way. 

As the graph shows, all carriers are likely to experience over 20 days in delays due to port congestion. Maersk currently stands to lose the most with average delays due to port congestion equating to 49.71 days for all lanes connecting to Mexico. In just two cases—CMA CGM and Hapag Lloyd—did we find that the initially quoted time exceeded the delays due to port congestion.

Route Delays and Quoted Route Length

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The above findings are likely the result of ocean carriers accounting just for the maritime transportation time between ports. These quotes, however, heavily underestimate the disruptions that could result from port congestion, be it protests in Canadian ports or terrorist attacks against vessels in the Red Sea. The true length of routes is likely closest to the addition of average route length and average route delays—as shown on top of each stacked bar in the graph above.

We did the same analysis for regions in order to isolate which parts of the world are more likely causing the bulk of disruptions in the routes to and from Mexico. The graph below plots the average quoted duration of a trip divided by whether the route heads to or ends in Europe, Asia or the Americas. Next to it, we included the average route delays due to port congestion. As the graph shows, European and Asian routes are expected to suffer from additional delays of 25.84 and 24.53 days respectively. Meanwhile, routes in the Americas have a much higher 41.15 average delay. This suggests that a considerable amount of port congestion is happening in the Americas.

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The above analysis suggests just how relevant port congestion is to current ocean routes. Our estimates suggest that routes to and from Mexico could suffer from 4.1 days in delay for every additional port in the route—not to mention the possibility of further unforeseen events such as weather disruptions or geopolitical conflict.

Shipping Visibility For Smooth Shipping

We believe companies should have complete visibility to these disruptions as they plan their production plans. That is why we built a comprehensive platform that gives you end to end visibility on your shipments and potential disruptions to them. If you’d like to see how port congestion could impact your company, make sure to schedule a demo.