Planning an import when ports are congested

A shipping schedule used to be a promise. Over the past year it has become a rough guess. Vessels wait days outside busy ports for a berth, containers sit in yards longer than anyone planned, and a sailing date on a booking confirmation can move more than once before the cargo is loaded. If you import goods, you can’t fix that. You can plan around it.

What congestion looks like from the importer’s side

Port congestion is a queue, and queues grow when arrivals outrun the work the port can do. In 2021 arrivals were heavy because consumer demand for goods stayed high. The work was slow because terminals were short of labor at times, yards were full of boxes that trucks could not collect fast enough, and a shortage of chassis or warehouse space backed things up further.

The effect for you is not one big delay. It is several small ones that add up. The ship arrives late. It waits for a berth. Unloading takes longer. The container is not available for pickup on the day the system said it would be. Then the truck appointment slips.

Each step is a few days. Together they can turn a six week plan into an eight or ten week one.

Build the buffer into the plan, not into your hopes

The simplest fix is also the one importers resist most: assume the transit takes longer than the carrier’s schedule says, and write that into your own lead time. A useful rule is to take your normal lead time from purchase order to shelf, then add a margin sized to what has actually happened on recent shipments of yours, not to what the brochure says.

If the last three containers each arrived a week or more behind schedule, a one week margin is the minimum. Two weeks is safer.

That margin has a cost, because stock bought earlier ties up cash for longer. But a stockout costs sales and customers, and that is usually the larger bill.

Order earlier, and order in the right shape

Placing orders sooner is the obvious part. The less obvious part is deciding which products cannot afford to run out and giving them the earliest slots. Fast sellers and items with a fixed selling season come first. Slow movers can wait.

Splitting orders helps too. One large shipment is simple to manage, but if it is delayed, everything is delayed. Two or three smaller shipments, staggered by a couple of weeks, mean that a problem with one does not empty the shelves. Smaller consignments cost more per unit to move, so weigh this against the risk, product by product.

Know when the clocks start

Three clocks run on an imported container, and none of them waits for you.

• Free time at the terminal. The days the container can stay in the port before storage or demurrage charges begin.
• Detention. The days you may hold the carrier’s container outside the port before charges begin.
• Customs limits. Rules on how long cargo can stay in the port zone without being cleared. Your customs broker can tell you what applies to your goods.

Ask the carrier or forwarder for the free days in writing and find out what event starts the count. It is often the discharge of the container, which can be well before you are able to collect it. During congestion a box can use up part of its free time before it is even released.

Have the paperwork finished before the ship arrives

Customs clearance cannot start properly without documents, and documents are the part of the process you control completely. At the very least, you need these ready and consistent with each other:

1. The commercial invoice, with the goods described the same way as on the other documents.
2. The packing list, with quantities, weights and package counts that match the invoice.
3. The bill of lading, checked against both for names and addresses.
4. Any permits, certificates or licenses the product type requires in Panama.

A typing error in a quantity or a consignee name can hold a container at the port while the paperwork is corrected. In a quiet year that is an annoyance. In a congested one the box sits in a yard and the charges run while it waits.

A worked example

Take a hypothetical retailer in Panama City that sells home goods and wants a container of cookware on its shelves by the first week of December. Under normal conditions, the buyer would allow about eight weeks from placing the order to receiving the goods: production, trucking to port, ocean transit, customs clearance, and delivery.

The retailer works backward. Recent shipments have run about two weeks late, so the plan assumes ten weeks. The order goes out in early September, not early October. The buyer also splits it. Sixty percent of the units ship on the first sailing and the rest on the next one, three weeks later.

Before the first container leaves the factory, the invoice and packing list are checked line by line. The retailer asks the forwarder for the free days at destination and learns it has five. A truck is arranged ahead of the arrival date, so the container does not wait for a driver after it is released.

Now suppose the first ship waits a week offshore. The goods still reach the store in time, because the plan had two weeks of cushion. The second container arrives after the holiday rush, which was the expected outcome of the split. The retailer lost nothing it had not already planned to risk.

Be honest with your own customers

If you resell goods or supply other businesses, the conversation about delays should happen early. A customer who hears “mid December, with a chance of late December” and gets goods on December 20 is satisfied. A customer who was told December 10 and gets goods on December 20 is not, even though the goods arrived on the same day.

Give a range rather than a single date. Tell them what the range depends on. Update them when the vessel moves, not when the container arrives.

What this does not fix

Planning does not make a port faster. It reduces how much a slow port hurts you. Some delays will still be outside any buffer you chose, and some costs will still land on your side. The aim is to keep surprises small and keep the decisions in your hands, which is more than most importers had in a year when the schedule moved faster than the plan.

Planning an import and want to talk it through? Send the details through the contact form.