A West Australian business owner was left scratching his head after a vessel carrying a sea container of his product left its berth at Fremantle Port last month without dropping off his container or the 176 others still on board.
And the current delays go a long way further than affecting just this one customer, with everything from TVs to construction material sent to Australia from China being affected.
Equine fencing business owner Ben Duncan has more stock floating at sea than in his warehouses.Credit: Ben Duncan
Already five weeks late due to delays at docks in China and Singapore, Ben Duncan of Duncan Equine was further distressed when instead of his container being unloaded at Adelaide for delivery back to Fremantle, severe weather forced the Aquarius, of the Maersk fleet, to skip the South Australian port and continue to Melbourne.
He was left with two options: wait for the container to be unloaded and reloaded onto another ship leaving Melbourne for Fremantle, or have it sent by rail from Melbourne, with global freight transporter Maersk covering the charges.
Determined his clients get their fencing before foals’ expected birthdates this month, Duncan worked with his freight forwarder on option two.
“Ship, truck, train, truck,” he said, referring to the extra leg needed to get the fencing from Fremantle to his Busselton warehouse.
“It’s worse than during COVID by a long way.”
But it’s not just equine fencing, nor Maersk, impacted by current delays.
All goods – from TVs to construction material – sent to Australia from China are experiencing similar delays.
“People need to be aware that there are ridiculous shipping delays and it’s tracking to become worse coming into the end of the year,” Duncan said.
“There are delays nowadays that are beyond anyone’s control.
“It’s not us making excuses; it’s not that we haven’t got the product on the water – we currently have double the stock on the water that’s in our warehouses.”
And for some small businesses, cashflow and lack of space make it near impossible to order extra stock to get ahead of delays.
A Maersk spokesperson said 780 containers were successfully unloaded at Fremantle on July 18 before operational and vessel stability issues prevented “out of gauge” cargo – cargo requiring a different unloading method – being deposited.
“As there was no loading point diagram available, DP World in Fremantle were unable to discharge the [out of gauge] containers [and] the containers stowed below the out of gauge containers were unable to be accessed and had to remain on board the vessel,” they said.
“Maersk schedule reliability in June 2024 was 20 per cent higher than the market average on the Oceania to Asia trade.
“for the year to date we have executed 602 port calls in Australia, equivalent to 2.7 port calls per day.
“The events and impact to JPO Aquarius is uncommon and impacted by multiple events causing cargo delays.”
Only one of the 41 Maersk port omissions reported thus far in 2024 occurred at Fremantle.
The storm-forced omission of the Adelaide stop in July was also the first and only time a Maersk vessel had missed the port this year.
The majority of the remaining omissions were the result of port delays caused by a dispute between port operator DP World Australia and the Australian Maritime Union.
International supply chain expert Kelly Crossley, owner of Transitainer WA, blamed Duncan’s situation on disorganisation and miscommunication in the shipping industry.
“The transhipment situation for containers headed to Fremantle is completely unpredictable leaving us to deal with repeated frustration and even anger from customers who we cannot give a definitive answer to with regard to stock availability, particularly in WA,” Crossley said.
“We are at the behest of a shipping industry that operates by a rulebook they’ve written.”
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