Port of LA/LB considering new plan to reduce empty containers

Ports, shipping lines and terminal operators are working on the plan with John Porcari, the Biden administration's special port envoy for port liquidity. Congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reached historic levels during an 18-month surge in freight traffic.

If passed, the so-called over match plan would replace an earlier proposal by the Port of Los Angeles to impose detention charges on long-delayed, fully loaded containers. Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka said at a Jan. 13 meeting of the Los Angeles Port Board that port staff will consult with stakeholders for further input before deciding whether to bring the proposal to the board.

About 120,000 empty containers are stranded at its 12 terminals, said Noel Hacegaba, deputy executive director and chief operating officer at the Port of Long Beach. Empty containers are now the leading cause of congestion at terminals in Long Beach and Los Angeles as ports have seen fewer long-term, fully loaded import containers following the port's announcement in October of hefty container detention charges. Ports have repeatedly delayed charging exorbitant detention charges, citing the successful removal of long-detained containers.

The number of inbound containers stranded at the terminal for 9 days or more has dropped by 60% and now represents only 10% of the container inventory at the terminal. We hope to build on this progress and turn our attention to empty containers, which are empty containers. Containers currently account for 47 percent of all containers at the Long Beach terminal. That`s roughly double pre-pandemic levels," Hacegaba said.
Hacegaba said the super-matching scheme would incentivise ocean carriers to ship more outbound containers per month than inbound containers, and it would need to be done in the least disruptive way for them. Details on the incentive scheme are being worked out with port stakeholders.
The working group has determined that the scheme of how many outbound containers a vessel must pick up cannot be applied to each vessel call. Many ships come into port already full of imported cargo, so it is mathematically impossible to carry more than 100% of their capacity. Hacegaba said the scheme would be based on the total number of inbound and outbound containers per carrier per month, rather than per terminal. The carrier calls at multiple terminals in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach under its Vessel Sharing Alliance.
It's also important that ports take care not to allow carriers to favor return trips with empty containers over full export containers, Hacegaba said. For the past year, U.S. exporters have expressed concern that carriers could reject relatively low-paying exports and instead ship empty containers back to Asia to refill more high-paying imported consumer goods.
Even though Transpacific has deployed multiple single-voyage sweepers at the Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles to bring empty containers back to Asia since last fall, empty containers continue to take up space at the terminal. Alan McCorkle, president of Yusen Terminals in Los Angeles, said the sweepers are having an impact and the port liquidity situation is much better now.

McCorkle added that in recent months, some new services deployed by carriers that have never operated in the transpacific are receiving empty containers from other carriers that have a surplus of empty containers. "They sold empty containers to other shipping companies that docked here so they could make room," McCorkle said.

source:https://www.sofreight.com/