Colombo has broken into the world’s top 20 container ports and volumes are surging. But ships are being delayed, tens of thousands of containers are caught in an inter-terminal backlog and pressure is exposing weaknesses at precisely the moment Sri Lanka has an opportunity to capture more regional business.
There is a delicious irony developing at the Port of Colombo. Sri Lanka has spent years wanting more ships, more containers and more transshipment business. Now some of that business has arrived and parts of the port are struggling to digest it.
Container throughput reached 774,513 TEUs in July, up 7.3 per cent year-on-year, while total throughput during the first seven months climbed 11.2 per cent to more than 5.2 million TEUs. Transshipment traffic alone exceeded 4.18 million TEUs during that period. Colombo has consequently moved from 26th to 20th in Alphaliner’s global container-port rankings, entering the world’s top 20 for the first time.
Submit Your Press Release
Get your company news, announcements, launches, appointments and events in front of a wider audience.
That should be very good news.
But Hapag-Lloyd’s latest operational assessment presents the other side of the story. The shipping giant says vessels with berthing windows at Colombo can now expect delays of 48 to 72 hours, with inter-terminal transfer ITT pendency reaching 53,000 TEUs, up from the 35,000 TEUs reported only weeks earlier. Yard density and bad weather are adding to the difficulty.
Industry sources have reported vessel turnaround at Colombo’s deep-draft terminals stretching to as much as six days in some cases. The pressure is concentrated particularly at Colombo International Container Terminal and, to a lesser extent, Colombo West International Terminal, because these facilities can accommodate the largest vessels.
Part of the problem is actually an opportunity created elsewhere. Disruption in the Gulf has diverted cargo towards South Asian ports, and Colombo’s geography and deep-water capability make it an obvious alternative. But an opportunity is only valuable if Sri Lanka can handle it.
There are other warning signs. The East Container Terminal has reportedly absorbed relatively little of the overflow, with industry sources pointing to efficiency concerns. An insufficient tug fleet is also said to be slowing vessel movements within the harbour. Two additional tugboats have been approved for hire at a reported cost of US$17.16 million over five years, excluding taxes but they are not expected to enter service until next year.
Meanwhile, Colombo West International Terminal’s second phase is expected to be completed by December, taking its annual capacity towards 3.2 million TEUs. That additional capacity cannot come soon enough.
Sri Lanka therefore has an unusual problem: success is testing the infrastructure required to sustain that success.
Shipping lines are not sentimental. Colombo’s position on the map is permanent; their decision to use Colombo is not. A container that can be transshipped faster and more reliably through another regional hub represents business that can disappear almost as quickly as it arrived.
Be that as it may, the congestion should not obscure the larger achievement. Colombo entering the global top 20 is significant. The question for the Ports Authority and Government is whether Sri Lanka can convert an extraordinary moment of regional disruption into permanent market share.
The ships are coming. The real test is whether Colombo can persuade them to keep coming.
