Container and bulk ships are skipping Asia’s largest refueling hub in Singapore as delays at ports in China and elsewhere prompt vessels to reschedule their stops to save time.
Last month, 3,020 ships called at the city state to refuel, 441 fewer than a year earlier, preliminary data released by the Singaporean Maritime Port Authority showed.
That led to bunker fuel sales last month falling to 3.77 million tonnes, the lowest seasonally since 2016. Bunkering is the supplying of fuel for use by ships.
Fewer ships are stopping at Singapore as congestion at ports globally prompts companies to skip the transit hub between East and West.
Shanghai’s lockdown to contain China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak since 2020 has created gridlock at the world’s largest container port, with queues of vessels building there and at other stops handling diverted shipments. The situation has put more pressure on already strained global supply chains.
Hundreds of bulk ships are waiting off eastern China to unload raw commodities and are likely to refuel in Guangzhou or Zhoushan instead of Singapore to save on time, traders said.
Ships are “locked up waiting in congested areas” and are burning lots of fuel, Ocean Network Express Holdings chief executive officer Jeremy Nixon said on April 5.
Singapore is typically a refueling stop for container ships passing through the Strait of Malacca as they take goods from Northeast Asia to Europe. Bulk carriers transporting iron ore from South America to China and tankers carrying crude oil from the Middle East to Asia also pass the port.
MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co canceled trips from Europe to Asia that would have included stops in Singapore, notices sent to customers showed.
AP Moller-Maersk A/S, one of the biggest shipping lines in the world, has stopped bookings to ship refrigerated containers into Shanghai as a strict COVID-19 lockdown stalls the trucking of meat and seafood from the port into the city.
Containers are piling up at the Port of Shanghai due to supply chain disruptions caused by the lockdown, Ocean Network Express said in an advisory to customers on Thursday.
The port is running out of electric plug slots to keep refrigerated containers cool, while trucking remains limited and terminals are congested, Asia’s second-biggest container shipping line said.
That has prompted Maersk to stop all new deliveries of refrigerated goods and some hazardous cargoes into Shanghai until further notice, the firm said on Thursday.
Maersk is waiving charges for customers to change the destination of their frozen goods already sailing to Shanghai.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
RIDING AI WAVE: : Most of its NT$15bn capital budget would be spent on packaging technologies used in AI and HPC chips and advanced testing technology, it said Chip testing and packaging service provider Powertech Technology Inc (PTI, 力成科技) plans to increase this year’s capital expenditure by 50 percent to expand capacity to meet growing demand for advanced memorychips used in artificial intelligence (AI) products. The company proposed to spend NT$15 billion (US$460.94 million) to expand advanced capacity and equipment, compared with a budget of NT$10 billion it planned three months ago. “We are seeing a recovery in market demand as well as new business opportunities. We will spend heavily on advanced packaging” equipment, Powertech chief executive officer Boris Hsieh (謝永達) told investors on Tuesday. “We will focus on ramping
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San