The company has added about 250000 TEU of container equipment in 2020 to meet strong market demand, but it still faces shortages in recent months, CEO Habben Jansen Herberot said.
"The congestion in the port and the increase in traffic have exacerbated the problem, and I think this tension will ease in 6-8 weeks ."
Congestion means that there are quite a lot of ships on schedule, which also leads to a declining weekly capacity. Jansen call on shippers to provide more accurate demand information and fulfill box volume commitments to facilitate problem solving.
Jansen said that in the past few months, the number of booking boxes has increased by 80-90. This means that the gap between the number of orders received by operators and the final shipment volume is increasing.
He also called on customers to return containers as soon as possible to reduce turnaround time.
"Generally speaking, the average number of times a container is used in a year is five, but this year it has dropped to 4.5, which means 10% to 15% extra containers are needed to maintain normal operation.
That's why we asked the customer to return the container as soon as possible ." Jansen believes that the shortage of containers is one of the reasons for the record freight rates in the east and west trunk lines, but the surge is temporary and will fall back when demand slows.