Asian vessels stranded by stoppage

Asian vessels stranded by stoppage

Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press, Hong Kong

The port shutdown on the West Coast of the United States has
begun to pinch Asian shippers whose container vessels are
stranded in and outside North American ports.

Container shipping is a bread-and-butter business for Hong
Kong, the world's largest container port, and a protracted
shutdown could ripple throughout the regional economy - hurting
manufacturing, transport and other related industries.

Asian toy and textile exporters who depend heavily on the U.S.
market are now facing a holiday season rush, so the timing of the
shutdown has them particularly anxious.

"This is not only affecting West Coast ports, it's having a
chain effect," Sunny Ho Lap-kee, executive director of the Hong
Kong Shippers Council, said Wednesday. "This could result in a
disaster. If there's no sign of a compromise it will affect the
whole global economy."

The Grand Alliance, a consortium of shipping lines that
includes Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line, said 11
vessels belonging to members were already snarled in delays
caused by the lockout of dockworkers at all 29 West Coast ports.
Overall, 125 vessels carrying a half-million containers were
reported to be waiting to dock.

Orient Overseas Container Line is owned by the family of Hong
Kong's government leader, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. It has
container vessels stranded at Long Beach, Los Angeles and
Oakland, according to a report listed on its Web site.

It said Japanese line NYK has two ships at anchorage awaiting
berthing in Los Angeles. Other lines affected were German carrier
Hapag-Lloyd and Anglo-Dutch line P & O Nedlloyd.

Hong Kong's port authorities had no immediate comment on the
shutdown.

Singapore officials reported no noticeable impact.

"The impact so far has not been significant, but there is a
lot of worrying," said John Lu, chairman of the Singapore
National Shippers' Council.

Malaysian ports also said that since the shutdown only began
on Sunday, they had not noted problems yet.

"We have not received any reports of delays," said Azman Aziz,
general manager of operations at Pasir Gudang Port in Johor,
which ships containers via Singapore. "The movement of cargo is
still smooth."

Ho of Hong Kong's Shippers Council, whose organization
represents importers and exporters and industry associations,
said that although a weeklong national day holiday in mainland
China had blunted the initial shock, shippers were already noting
signs of a shortage of empty containers.

Many of the biggest container vessels are too wide to go
through the Panama Canal so they cannot use that option to reach
ports on the East Coast. Shipping by air was too costly for much
of the relatively low-valued merchandise shipped through Hong
Kong and Chinese ports, he said.

Some manufacturers did take precautions ahead of the widely
expected dock closure.

Hong Kong-based trading firm Li & Fung, which handles U.S.-
bound exports for many major manufacturers, was unconcerned
because its clients had made alternative plans, shifting to east
coast-bound shipments or air, said Fannie Mok, a spokeswoman for
the company.

Hong Kong's container terminals handled 18 million 20-foot (6-
meter) equivalent units of containers last year, making Hong Kong
the world's largest port in terms of volume handled.

Each day, an average of 4,300 containers leave Hong Kong bound
for West Coast ports. About 60 percent of the goods shipped to
the United States by container come via Hong Kong or mainland
Chinese ports.

Hutchison International Holdings, which runs three terminals
in Hong Kong and has major interests in other ports, said it
expected manufacturers and shippers to hold onto shipments until
the dispute was resolved.

So far, there was no problem with stalled cargo, said Anthony
Tam, a Hutchison spokesman.

"Based on past experience, we do expect that a backlog will be
created and there might be disruptions similar to those caused by
typhoons," Tam said.