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.