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Ports and shipping companies are diverting vessels from a container terminal in China’s busiest marine transportation hub which was forced to close after a coronavirus case emerged, as the pandemic strains global supply amid rising retail orders.<\/p>\n
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Meidong container terminal in eastern Ningbo suspended operations on Wednesday after a COVID-19 case was detected, while nearby Shanghai also recorded the worst congestion in at least three years.<\/p>\n
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On Friday, 37 vessels were waiting to call at Ningbo and 26 vessels queuing for Shanghai, slightly down from 39 and 29, respectively, on Thursday, Refinitiv data showed.<\/p>\n
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The lockdown of Meidong terminal has sent ripples through the global shipping market, coming ahead of the busiest shopping season at year-end and on top of several supply chain disruptions caused by resurgences of COVID-19, extreme climate events and labor shortages.<\/p>\n
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“The company will actively negotiate with the shipowner … and reasonably divert the vessels due to call at Meidong to other port areas,” said Meidong’s owner, Ningbo Zhoushan Port Co Ltd (601018.SS), in a statement on late Thursday.<\/p>\n
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The world’s leading container line, Maersk, said in a note that a few of its vessels due to call at Meidong would be rerouted to other terminals in Ningbo, while one vessel serving an Asia-South America route will skip docking at Ningbo next week.<\/p>\n
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Hapag-Lloyd also said three of its vessels would skip Ningbo next week, expecting congestion and delays as vessels to Meidong are diverted to other terminals in Ningbo.<\/p>\n
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According to Ningbo Zhoushan port firm, operations at its other terminals in Ningbo were operating normally, but it will only accept bookings for export-bound containers within two days prior to the arrival of vessels to limit the number of people at ports and to reduce backlogs.<\/p>\n
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Meidong terminal handled 5.44 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) in 2020, accounting for about 17% of total container handling volume in Ningbo, transportation ministry data showed.<\/p>\n
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China’s Yantian port in the south had slowed productivity due to a COVID-19 case in late May, causing weeks-long port congestion in the region and heavy backlogs at port yards.<\/p>\n
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Shanghai port has also tightened disinfection and quarantine measures and has asked front line workers to stay at port after the COVID-19 case was found in Ningbo. But no operational disruption has been reported.<\/p>\n
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(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Shivani Singh; Editing by Nick Macfie)<\/em><\/p>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ports and shipping companies are diverting vessels from a container terminal in China’s busiest marine transportation hub which was forced to close after a coronavirus case emerged, as the pandemic strains global supply amid rising retail orders. Meidong container terminal in eastern Ningbo suspended operations on Wednesday after a COVID-19 case was detected, while nearby …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[14863,3537,3192,953,62,3199,1256,304],"class_list":["post-27836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-divert","tag-firms","tag-ningbo","tag-port","tag-shipping","tag-shuts","tag-terminal","tag-vessels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/27837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}