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ContainerSignal Daily: Typhoon Champi shuts Taiwan container ports

By ContainerSignal Editorial · · 11 min read

Taiwan’s three main container ports were shut on Friday 23 October as Typhoon Champi passed close to the island. Kaohsiung, the busiest container port on the island, closed along with Keelung and Taipei, JOC reported, and Ocean Network Express warned customers of delays to its intra-Asia services. Along the East China coast, container terminals at Ningbo, Yangshan and Waigaoqiao were fully operational at 11:00 on 22 October, the World Ports Organization reported, while pilotage at the Changjiang Estuary was suspended and local authorities had raised emergency response levels, with Ningbo at Level III and Shanghai at Level IV.

The disruption lands on a network that was already running behind schedule. Drewry Supply Chain Advisors put average waiting time at Shanghai at about 3.4 days in week 39, against a global average of 1.3 days, The Loadstar reported, and the consultancy’s Chantal McRoberts noted that four typhoons in seven weeks is a lot for any network to absorb. Carriers have answered with rotation changes rather than with the blank sailings that supported spot rates earlier this week. ONE has extended a Ningbo substitution on one transpacific loop into December, and Hapag-Lloyd and Wan Hai have cut Shanghai to a fortnightly call on a joint Asia to US East Coast service.

Today’s Signals

Ports

Taiwan’s closure removes berth and gate time at the region’s main relay point. The three ports handle a large share of intra-Asia relay cargo, the transfer of boxes between regional and deep-sea ships that transshipment describes, so a lost day of operations ripples into feeder schedules across the Taiwan Strait as well as into direct export bookings. SEKO Logistics’ Asia supply chain update on 23 October put yard utilisation at Kaohsiung’s container terminal above 90% and warned shippers to expect multi-day berthing, customs and drayage delays across Kaohsiung, Keelung and Taipei Port.

East China is the second front. Ningbo, Yangshan and Waigaoqiao were working normally on 22 October, but Fujian’s maritime authorities barred vessels arriving from Guangdong from entering the Taiwan Strait from noon on Wednesday and stopped accepting large vessels and dangerous-goods carriers, according to the World Ports Organization, which cited Lloyd’s List. Pilotage at the Changjiang Estuary was suspended, which maritime services provider Mas Oceans said would create further operational challenges for feeder movements into Shanghai. The practical measure of the damage will be waiting time once terminals reopen: delays compound because vessels arrive out of sequence and miss berthing windows, the effect tracked in what schedule reliability measures.

Latakia adds six yard cranes. Latakia International Container Terminal in Syria has taken delivery of six fifth-generation rubber-tyred gantry cranes under its modernisation programme with CMA CGM, Container News reported. The delivery was confirmed on 21 October by Mazen Alloush, director of international relations and cooperation at Syria’s General Authority for Borders and Customs. The authority confirmed arrival rather than commissioning: no date for entry into commercial service and no investment value were disclosed.

Carrier Updates

ONE has taken Shanghai out of a transpacific rotation until early December. The carrier extended a temporary port substitution on its Pacific South service, originally advised on 18 September, so that the rotation runs Yantian, Kaohsiung, Keelung, Ningbo, Los Angeles, Oakland, Keelung, Kaohsiung and back to Yantian, with Ningbo replacing Shanghai, ONE’s customer advisory states. The extension covers sailings with a Ningbo ETA from 28 October to 4 December 2026, and ONE said Shanghai outbound cargo will be diverted to its Pacific South 6 service. The advisory does not give a reason for the change.

Hapag-Lloyd and Wan Hai have thinned Shanghai coverage on their joint AA7 loop. Shanghai will now be called fortnightly, alternating with Ningbo, rather than weekly, on a service that deploys 13 ships of about 6,500 to 13,500 TEU, Container News reported. The revised rotation is Shanghai or Ningbo, Taipei, Yantian, Shekou, Cai Mep, Singapore, Colombo, Newark, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah and back, with Colombo served on the Ningbo sailings. AA7 is a vessel-sharing arrangement of the kind explained in how shipping alliances work: the two carriers market slots on the same string, so a rotation change moves capacity for both at once.

Trade Routes

MSC and ZIM have moved a joint Asia to US East Coast service back through Suez. The change ends a routing around southern Africa and forms part of the gradual return of Far East services to the shorter Suez passage, JOC reported. The article is behind a paywall, so the service name, the first affected sailing and the voyage count could not be verified from the publisher’s own text. What is confirmed by the report is the direction of travel: on this lane the Suez routing shortens the round voyage against the Cape of Good Hope, which returns effective capacity to the trade without any new tonnage being delivered.

Fleet & Capacity

An electric feeder design wins class approval. Hanwha Power has received Approval in Principle from the American Bureau of Shipping for a fully electric 1,700 TEU containership, Container News reported. The design uses a 151 MWh energy storage system built from containerised battery units that would be handled and stowed like standard boxes and charged through port infrastructure, and it is aimed at short-sea and regional trades where shore charging is available. An approval in principle certifies the concept, not a ship: no order, yard slot or delivery date has been announced.

Regulation & Policy

The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework reaches its decisive meeting in December. At the Global Maritime Forum’s annual summit in Shanghai this week, IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said the 2050 decarbonisation goal remains in place and that the industry still needs countries to invest in infrastructure and energy suppliers to invest in new fuels, Hellenic Shipping News reported. The summit’s closing message, as reported, was that a global regulatory framework is needed to convert first-mover investment in dual-fuel ships into a fleet-wide transition. Nothing has been decided: the framework’s fate rests on the December proceedings, and carriers are already hedging by ordering conventional tonnage alongside dual-fuel ships.

US drayage carriers want rules on empty container returns. A stakeholder group of truckers serving New York and New Jersey has asked the Federal Maritime Commission for a rulemaking that would set enforceable standards for empty container handling, arguing that more of the burden should fall on ocean carriers, JOC reported. No rule has been proposed, and the commission has not committed to acting. The complaint touches the same cost bucket as demurrage and detention, where the dispute is over who pays when equipment cannot be returned on the carrier’s terms.

What It Means

This week’s capacity management has taken two forms, and they are not equivalent. Blank sailings withdraw an advertised voyage, which is how carriers supported Asia to Europe spot rates this week. Port substitutions and fortnightly calls move the same ships to a different berth, which protects schedule integrity at the cost of service frequency. ONE’s switch to Ningbo and the AA7 change both fall in the second category: Shanghai exporters keep a call, but on fewer sailings, and cargo that used to load on a Thursday may now wait a fortnight.

For shippers, the exposure this weekend is North Asian rather than global. Taiwan’s main ports were shut on Friday, and the storm was forecast to track along China’s eastern seaboard before reaching Japan on Sunday, so the cargo at risk is export boxes waiting for a berth window, not cargo already at sea. Forwarders should treat early next week as a recovery period rather than a normal one, and should expect carriers to invoke schedule-change notices for the first week of November.

The strategic point sits underneath the weather. A network that was already running three days late at Shanghai before the storm has little buffer, and every one of these events pushes tonnage out of position for the next loop. Congestion and blank sailings shrink available capacity in different ways, one by delaying ships and the other by withdrawing advertised voyages, which is why the pace of the Suez return matters: MSC and ZIM restoring a US East Coast routing shortens round voyages and rebuilds the buffer that congestion and typhoons keep consuming.

Sources

Background reading

The explainers behind today's stories, if you want the fundamentals first.

The Arctic container route works; the backhaul does not yet exist

Two Arctic container trials closed within days of each other. Both carried export cargo out and empties home, which is where the route's economics break.

Asia-Europe rates fall even as the container network stays tight

Asia-Europe spot rates fell for a twelfth week while intra-Asia set another record and mid-size tonnage ran scarce. The two readings measure different layers.

FuelEU Maritime explained: targets, scope and penalties

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