Berth delays push recovered fibre exporters onto costlier inland routes
Congestion at a major South Asian container terminal has added a reported eight to twelve days to recovered paper and plastics shipments, pushing some traders toward alternative discharge ports.
Exporters of recovered paper and baled plastics report that berth congestion at a major South Asian deep-water terminal has added between eight and twelve days to typical transit-to-discharge times since late June, with knock-on effects on demurrage exposure and container availability.
Traders attribute the backlog to a combination of a monsoon-season handling slowdown, an equipment outage affecting several berths, and a surge in inbound volumes ahead of a regional holiday period. Terminal operations have reportedly improved marginally in recent weeks but remain well below normal throughput.
The cost lands on the wrong cargo
The commercial problem is specific to low-value bulk commodities moving in boxes. Recovered fibre and mixed plastic bales move on thin per-tonne margins, and free-time allowances at destination are calculated on the assumption of prompt discharge.
“On a container of high-value cargo you absorb a week and complain,” said Wilfried Okonjo, chartering manager at Portside Fibre Trading. “On a box of mixed paper, a week of detention is the entire trade. We have shipments where the demurrage exceeds what the cargo sold for.”
Several traders said they have suspended new bookings to the affected terminal entirely rather than quote a price they cannot underwrite.
Rerouting has its own arithmetic
The alternative discharge ports available in the region are generally shallower, have less recovered-material handling experience, and sit farther from the mills that consume the cargo. That converts an ocean-freight problem into an inland-haulage problem.
Two traders quoted additional inland trucking costs of $18 to $26 per tonne to reach the same mills from alternative ports — recoverable in a strong market, punitive in a flat one. A third said the deciding factor was not cost but reliability: a known inland charge is easier to price into a sale than an open-ended demurrage risk.
Effects are showing up upstream
North American and European packers with export-oriented books said the disruption has softened offshore bids for grades that compete for the same containers, particularly mixed paper and lower-grade film. Where offshore demand thins, that tonnage either goes domestic at a discount or does not move.
Coastal yards with domestic mill alternatives have absorbed the shift with little difficulty. Inland packers dependent on export placement have less flexibility, and two reported building inventory beyond comfortable levels while waiting for the routing picture to settle.
Traders contacted for this article expected conditions to normalise over four to eight weeks, with the usual caveat that congestion tends to clear more slowly than it accumulates.