New teu waiting days indicator highlights the severity of global container congestion

Kuehne + Nagel has developed a new measure of container congestion. Its digital platform seaexplorer now features the Global Disruption Index.

The index seems to total the cumulative TEU waiting time in days, based on container ship capacity in certain disrupted hot spots. Many US ports are included in the index. some Chinese and Korean ports and European ports are also included.

The graph below is an example of the information available. It clearly shows the rise in the index from 1- December to 19-January. North American ports are also clearly the largest contributors; however it is not clear from the article whether more ports from the US and North America are included in the analysis. The patterns are clearly similar.

Now quite a few marine reporting services have developed congestion measures.

Is there a best one? I have not seen a study comparing the indices as to accuracy or the ability to provide insight.

For instance this Bloomberg article talks about another one, from RBC Capital Markets.

And this article from the Washington Post gives a good picture of the problems in the US.

Splash247 has also reported on the index created by the New York Federal Reserve here.

But the congestion cannot be denied. How to measure it and how to fix it are the questions to answer, for we get what we measure.

Sam Chambers January 20, 2022

New teu waiting days indicator highlights the severity of global container congestion – Splash247