The mass diversions of container ships away from the Red Sea has resulted in another potential supply chain bottleneck, with storage yard capacity drying up at ports in the western Mediterranean Sea, potentially leading to more delays or product shortages for European retailers.
Ports in the region are nearing full capacity as vessels that opted to sail around Africa are unloading more cargo at gateways in Barcelona and Algeciras in Spain and Tanger-Med in Morocco.
According to a market update from Maersk, the logistics giant is continuing to monitor storage yard density levels across the various western Mediterranean hubs, especially in Barcelona, Tangier and Algeciras.
“Due to a congested line-up and increased waiting times at the Port of Barcelona, yard density has increased and customers are kindly asked to pick up both their import units and empty containers as early as possible,” the container shipping titan said. “In Algeciras and Tangier, adverse weather conditions and flow delays have contributed to a similar outcome.”
Maersk said it was working on improving the density levels by optimizing connections and reducing transshipment moves, which should clear out space over the next few weeks.
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The ports in question have seen an influx of new cargo since the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea began. Barcelona recorded a 17 percent rise in total 20-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) handled in February compared with the same month last year. Algeciras reported a 10 percent year-over-year jump in metric tons of cargo across both January and February.
Tanger-Med has not published traffic statistics this year.
Kuehne+Nagel’s Seaexplorer Analytics identified the three ports as having “slightly disrupted operations,” noting that the seven-day average vessel waiting time at Barcelona increased to around two days due to increased cargo flow, lowered productivity, IT issues and bad weather.
Alonso Luque, CEO of TTI Algeciras, one of two container terminals at the Spanish port, told the Financial Times that their facility was “quite full” and warned that “capacity is very limited.” They told the publication that the terminal was restricting the amount of cargo it was accepting to avoid severe congestion. According to Seaexplorer Analytics, the yard occupancy is “currently manageable.”
Nabil Boumezzough, president of the management board of Tangier Alliance, which operates the TC3 container terminal in Morocco, told FT the terminal’s yard is nearly full.
While vessel wait times have lasted one day on average over the past week, as per Seaexplorer, CMA CGM reports waiting times of over a week for a berth at TC3.
Two more ports in Algeria are experiencing congestion, the Kuehne+Nagel data tracker says. While the seven-day average vessel waiting time in Algiers is roughly three days, these waiting times are nearly double for ships stopping at Oran, at 5.6 days.
After dropping off containers at the ports, short-distance “feeder” services ferry goods to other southern European transshipment terminals, which have seen fewer full vessel calls since the start of the Houthi attacks stonewalled traffic through the Red Sea.
For example, one such transshipment hub in Piraeus, Greece saw throughput fall 12.7 percent year over year in January 2024, according to Drewry. Additionally, Lloyd’s List Intelligence data shows Gioia Tauro vessel calls were down by almost one-fifth since October, while the number of vessels calling Piraeus declined 8 percent.
Since December, 653 vessels have been rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea, according to data from supply chain visibility platform Project44.
This has resulted in a dearth of traffic throughout the Suez Canal, which connects Red Sea ships to the Mediterranean Sea.
Shipping traffic through the Suez Canal has plummeted by 66 percent since mass diversions began in mid-December, according to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).
To put the dip in perspective, when the Ever Given got stuck in the canal in March 2021 and halted passage for six days, that month still saw 250 percent more container vessel traffic than March 2024, Project44 said. However, last month did see an 8.5 percent increase in vessel traffic compared to February.
Despite the ongoing congestion, schedule reliability across both Asia-to-Europe trade lanes covering the Mediterranean Sea and North Europe saw significant improvements from just a month prior, signaling that there haven’t been hiccups in getting to the ports.
According to Seaexplorer, the Asia-to-Mediterranean/Black Sea route had the largest upswing among 11 trade lanes observed, with schedule reliability improving by 11.8 percentage points in March to 41.3 percent.
Similarly, on-time performance for Asia to North Europe gained 11.5 percentage points, reaching 46.7 percent in March.
Reliability is still an issue for cargo exiting Mediterranean ports, with the Mediterranean/Black Sea-to-North America route the lowest at a 32.4 percent on-time rate. In the same origin to North Europe, schedule reliability is just 33.6 percent.