Delays Restrict Effective Vessel Supply
Port congestion and vessel delays have effectively removed approximately 1.7 million TEU of container ship capacity from available supply. This represents about 5% of the global fleet, according to Sea-Intelligence.
The vessels have not been physically taken out of service. However, ships waiting for berths or operating behind schedule take longer to complete their voyages and cannot be reassigned to subsequent services on time. Carriers consequently have less flexibility to match vessel capacity with demand.
Around 1 million TEU of the current loss is above the level historically considered normal. Between 2011 and 2019, delays absorbed an average of approximately 2.2% of global container capacity.
Effective Capacity Remains Below Normal
Sea-Intelligence estimates delay-absorbed capacity by considering both the proportion of vessels arriving late and the duration of their schedule deviation.
Earlier calculations indicated that between 2023 and 2026, schedule disruption removed an average of 5.3% of global capacity, equivalent to approximately 1.8 million TEU. Of this total, 1.06 million TEU was above the pre-disruption benchmark.
This means that expansion of the global fleet does not automatically result in an equivalent increase in usable capacity. New vessels can partly offset congestion, but prolonged delays continue to trap a substantial amount of tonnage within disrupted service networks.
Schedule Reliability Falls to 62.6%
According to the June report from Sea-Intelligence, global liner schedule reliability fell by 1.9 percentage points month on month to 62.6%.
The figure was also 4.7 percentage points lower than in June 2025. Meanwhile, the average delay for late vessel arrivals improved by 0.34 days to 5.31 days.
The results show that more than one-third of monitored sailings still fail to arrive on schedule. Even when the average delay becomes shorter, one late vessel can disrupt subsequent port calls, terminal operations and inland container movements.
Vessel Waiting Time Exceeds 15 Days in Beira
Some of the longest delays are being recorded at African ports. According to Kuehne+Nagel’s operational update for August 5–11, seven-day average vessel waiting times reached:
- 15.3 days in Beira;
- 13.6 days in Conakry;
- 5.55 days in Tema.
Operational pressure also persists at Genoa, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Felixstowe. Contributing factors include high yard utilisation, limited berth availability, labour constraints, delays in road and rail evacuation and barge restrictions associated with low water levels on the Rhine.
Congestion Supports Higher Freight Rates
Maersk reported a significant increase in ocean spot rates during the second quarter. The carrier attributed the rise to resilient demand, increasingly unbalanced trade flows, tight capacity and port congestion in Europe, the Middle East, the east coast of South America and West Africa.
According to Maersk’s second-quarter results, Ocean volumes increased by 4.1%, while the average loaded freight rate rose by 22% year on year. CEO Vincent Clerc said congestion and disruption were intensifying across both ports and inland transport networks.
K2Cargo.News previously reported that global container shipping rates were continuing to rise amid limited vessel availability and an early start to the peak season.
For cargo owners, the disruption means longer transit times, a greater risk of missed connections and additional storage, demurrage and rerouting expenses. Until ports and inland infrastructure can process growing cargo volumes more efficiently, part of the global fleet will remain unavailable to the market even though the ships themselves are still operating.
Read also: Port of Salalah Increased Container Throughput by 20% in the First Quarter of 2026
