The head of DHL’s freight unit believes port congestion should ease next year as new container ships are delivered and shippers’ demand returns from pandemic highs, but it won’t be enough to return global supply chains to pre-COVID levels. DHL’s global freight CEO, Tim Scharwath, said in an interview that “there will be some easing in 2023, but not back to 2019. I don’t think we’ll see the overcapacity situation with low freight rates. Infrastructure, especially in the U.S., won’t improve overnight because infrastructure development takes a long time.” Last year, the pandemic and related restrictions caused worker and truck driver shortages at several major ports worldwide, slowing the speed of goods in and out of shipping centers and pushing container shipping rates to record highs.
In September, shipping costs from China to Los Angeles were up more than eight times from the end of 2019, reaching $12,424. Scharwath warns that as more ships from Asia come, congestion at major European ports such as Hamburg and Rotterdam is worsening, and strikes by South Korean truck drivers will put pressure on supply chains. “No matter where you put pressure in the world, it will affect other parts of the supply chain. Five years ago, the situation in Korea wouldn’t have affected it. Now it will.” During the pandemic, container shipping companies have been ordering new ships, and port bottlenecks have pushed freight rates to historic highs, helping them announce record profits after years of losses. Data shows that as of the end of 2021, global container ship orders accounted for 9.8% of the existing global fleet, up about 6.5 percentage points from a year ago.