Analysts Sea-Intelligence say that all 14 of the busiest container ports in Asia have seen a decline in on-time vessel arrivals.
The world’s two largest container ports – Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan have been hit by consecutive typhoons this year, most recently typhoon Saudel last week causing severe delays at the ports.
Ningbo, which became the world’s second largest container port in the first half of 2026, saw its reliability fall by 20.1 percentage points to 34.6% in the month of July according to Sea-Intelligence.
The analyst described the picture in Shanghai as “particularly alarming” with a 19.2 percentage points drop in reliability resulting in just 21% of vessels arriving on time at port in July.
“Outside of extreme pandemic‑era supply chain disruptions, schedule reliability in Shanghai has never dropped this low in 14 years of recorded data,” commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
The largest drop in schedule reliability among top Asian ports was seen at Yantian in South China with a 23.5 percentage point plunge to 48.3% in July. Hong Kong also saw a 20.4 percentage point drop in reliability to 51.6% for July.
The fall in reliability was pronounced at the world’s largest transhipment hub of Singapore with a 5.7% percentage point drop in July, however reliability sat at just 43.2% Sea-Intelligence said. Looking at other ports in the region Port Klang had 33.3% reliability and Busan 40.9%.
The growth in delays at major Asian ports has driven a drop in schedule reliability for container to 56.1% falling 6.1 percentage points the steepest single month decline since the height of the pandemic in January 2021 the analyst said.
“With the region's busiest ports operating with more than half of their incoming vessels delayed, this backlog will naturally cascade through the maritime network, likely triggering a new wave of delays for critical head‑haul trade lanes in the coming months,” Murphy said.
Port congestion in Asia is pushing lines to end two and half year long rerouting of Asia – Europe services via the Cape of Good Hope back to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea despite the ongoing security threat from the Houthi in Yemen with its “blockade” of Saudi Arabian ports.
