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Port rotation changed to deal with Prince Rupert's congestion

DENMARK's shipping giant Maersk Line announced that it's temporarily diverting cargo on its Asian services from DP World's terminal at Prince Rupert to the DP World's Centerm terminal at Vancouver to avoid port congestion at Prince Rupert, where terminal expansion works have driven up dwell times to seven days.

The announcement came six days after Cosco announced it would be doing the same for vessels on its Asia-Canada services, IHS Media reported.

However, vessels will still call at Prince Rupert, but the calls will discharge less cargo."We have temporarily changed the port rotation for our TP9 service to call Vancouver first, instead of Prince Rupert," Maersk told customers in an advisory. "We believe that this change will help lessen the congestion at Prince Rupert and the initial intent is for the rotation change to be effective for up to four weeks."

A Prince Rupert Port Authority spokesperson said that there have been no changes to the current situation or the ongoing plan to address it and that an update from the port would not be available soon. Under the current plan, the port does not anticipate dwell times to return to their 2.5-day norm until November.

DP World has promised customers that it is working with its ocean carrier and railway partners to find a temporary solution for cargo now en route to Canada, while also working on a long-term solution to improve conditions at Prince Rupert.

"The construction associated with [DP World's] new rail loading capacity is scheduled to be completed by the end of October," Jonathan Abecassis, a CN spokesperson, said. "At that point, the new nameplate of 1.35 million TEU will mean ample railcar and terminal rail capacity."

"With this plan we expect to get dwell times in the range of four days by the end of next week," DP World said in a client advisory.

Although CN archrival Canadian Pacific Railway will be railing Cosco's diverted cargo from Vancouver inland, it will not be doing the same for Maersk. Maersk will continue to rail cargo from both Prince Rupert and Vancouver via CN rail.