A COMBINATION of service realignments, labour disruption and capacity growth has pushed up congestion at terminals in Europe and Latin America, reports UK's Seatrade Maritime News.

Labour disputes in Europe's two largest ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp have seen delays and congestion mount.

In the Dutch port's case, the labour contract has been resolved, but cargo flow in Rotterdam will only improve over the next six weeks said Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen.

Reshuffling of alliances were one of the reasons behind the build-up of port congestion at North European ports, according to Mr Jansen, who added that the German ports were now generally clear of congestion.

Of congestion at South American ports, he said, "the Brazilian market is very strong and vessel capacity has become tight due to congestion."

Beacon, the online supply chain visibility provider, shows average dwell times for containers at Brazil's largest port at Santos as five days, but that is down from more than seven days in February.

Alphaliner reports that Latin America had the fastest growing capacity serving the region, at 15.6 per cent, year on year, adding 606,500 TEU to services, totalling 14 per cent of the global fleet.

However, most of the new capacity delivered has been absorbed into the still diverted Far East/North Europe trades.

"Overall vessel capacity [on the Asia to Europe route] was up 11.7 per cent year on year. Another 817,000 TEU slots were deployed on the route, representing 31 per cent of all the newly added fleet capacity since May 2024," reported Alphaliner.

In the past two years carriers have added 2.26 million TEU to the Asia/Europe trades, raising the total capacity to 7.8 million TEU just shy of 25 per cent of the global fleet is deployed on these routes, up from 20 per cent in 2023.

Reopening of the Suez Canal route will not happen quickly, said Mr Jansen, because carriers would need to be certain that it was safe. "We need an outlook that gives a safe passage for reasonable amount of time," he said.

"Once Suez reopens much of the drydocking that has been postponed will take place, and at the moment ships are running fast, burning a lot of fuel and creating high emissions, they will slow down too," he said.

Capacity growth on the Pacific trades has been modest, when comparing May 2024 with May 2025, with an additional 190,000 TEU, up 3.7 per cent, of the total 2.62 million TEU operating between Asia and North America.