Severely strained ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach on the US West Coast will charge extra fees for containers idling in ports, creating bottlenecks in terminals.
Photo: Lucy /Ritzau Scanpix
Container carriers will need to pay extra fees for containers that stay longer than agreed in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, California, from November 1.
The ports are introducing these fees in an attempt to get rid of a large number of containers piling up in the port area, writes the port authority in a press release.
The new fees will apply to containers waiting longer for onward transportation by truck or by railroad, and the initial fee is USD 100 per container. The fee increases, the longer a container waits in the port beyond the agreed pick-up time.
“We must expedite the movement of cargo through the ports to work down the number of ships at anchor,” says Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka in a press release.
“Approximately 40 percent of the containers at our terminals today fall into the two categories [waiting for truck or rail, -ed.],” he says.
While the number of container vessels anchored off the largest container ports in the world has been declining in the past few weeks globally, the queue off Long Beach has continued to grow.
Last week, 80 container ships were anchored off the severely crowded port waiting to berth.
English Edit: Christoffer Østergaard
Long Beach logjam of container vessels grows to 80
