Severe congestion continues to plague ports across Europe with new alliance vessel plans combining with strikes, bad weather and fully occupied container yards to delay ships and disrupt terminal operations.

The bottlenecks are being felt in both North Europe and the Mediterranean, with carriers, terminals and forwarders reporting lengthy delays in some ports.

Maersk said in its latest Europe advisory that all terminals in Antwerp were congested “due to the phase-in and phase-out of vessel plans,” a factor that was being exacerbated by late vessel arrivals from delays in previous ports.

Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd are phasing in Gemini Cooperation services, with the new network expected to be fully deployed by the end of the second quarter. Likewise, Mediterranean Shipping Co. is moving services from its 2M Alliance with Maersk to a standalone network, and the Premier Alliance is adjusting to services without Hapag-Lloyd.

Carrier executives have warned customers that operational disruptions to port schedules will be experienced, with some old and new services running in parallel. The new networks will require two full cycles from Asia to Europe and back to Asia before they will be fully rolled out.

Maersk also reported delays in Bremerhaven, where several services were arriving late due to bad weather en route to the German port. In Rotterdam, the carrier said the Hutchinson Ports Delta II terminal was back to full operational productivity after a month of slowdowns following a tentative agreement between the company and dockworkers, but a backlog of inland cargo was still being cleared.

South Korean carrier HMM warned customers it was taking an average of three days to secure a berth at Hamburg that was experiencing a strike by boat pilots, while berth waiting times at Le Havre were up to 5.7 days because of recurring strikes in the French hub.

French unions are holding four-hour stoppages in Le Havre on eight separate days in March, in addition to a three-day strike planned this week from March 18–20. Significant disruption is already being experienced from the rolling industrial action, and the full-day strikes are set to bring container operations in France to a standstill this week.

Spillover effects of the Le Havre strike are also affecting Rotterdam, according to HMM, which said the average berth waiting time at Europe’s largest container port was 5.6 days.

Yards and berths fully occupied

Kuehne + Nagel’s SeaExplorer visibility platform reported heavily disrupted operations at Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp and Le Havre, with full container yards and most berths fully occupied.

Although SeaExplorer put the average waiting time at Hamburg at 1.25 days, it said the port was experiencing “heavily disrupted operations.” The bottlenecks saw Hamburg terminal operator HHLA imposing container delivery restrictions from Monday at Container Terminal Burchardkai (CTB) and Container Terminal Tollerort (CTT). Export container deliveries will be managed on a ship-by-ship basis, “potentially causing delays and complicating daily operations,” HHLA noted.

At Rotterdam’s ECT Euromax terminal, Hutchison Ports has announced that container stacks are so high it will not be able to accept empty containers delivered by road from March 23 “to prevent an unworkable situation.”

The port bottlenecks are also impacting inland connections from Rotterdam and nearby Antwerp. Intermodal operator Contargo on Monday reported average waiting times for the handling of its barges have reached 75 hours in Antwerp and 72 hours in Rotterdam.

Adding to the port congestion issues are seasonal low water levels in the Rhine River that restrict the loading of containers for inland destinations and are generating surcharges of about €50 ($54) per box. The low-water surcharges will rise as water levels drop further through the summer, with shifting cargo putting pressure on road and rail services.

In the Mediterranean, HMM noted that the Greek hub of Piraeus has a berth waiting time of 4.4 days and six days for feeder vessels, while average berth wait times at Genoa and La Spezia were four days.

Greg Knowler, Senior Editor Europe | Mar 17, 2025, 1:22 PM EDT