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The MOL Treasure shipping container vessel towered over houses in Marchwood, Hampshire as it arrived at the DP World Container Terminal at the Port of Southampton. The 400-metre vessel docked this morning after carrying goods from Yantian, a district of the city of Shenzhen, on the southern coast of China.

The Panama-registered ship called into port in Singapore, Egypt and Morocco on its latest voyage, after travelling 82,002 nautical miles last year.

It left Yantian on January 2 this year, before making a trip spanning 35 days.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been global supply chain issues as ports deal with a backlog of containers.

According to the British Ports Association (BPA), UK ports have been experiencing high volumes of containers as a result.

The issue has been compounded by a shortage of HGV drivers and limited warehouse space, making it harder to get containers out of ports.

UK ports were now seeing “unprecedented volatility” because of the supply chain issues caused by the pandemic.

The increase in e-commerce spurred on by Covid and successive lockdowns has added to the surge in container shipping demands, the BPA said, “as many consumer goods are imported from Asia”.

The BPA added that when the Chinese economy came out of lockdown last year, “we saw a glut in containers arriving in the UK and Europe but depressed demand, which used up a lot of storage and warehousing space.”

In October, Richard Ballantyne, BPA chief executive said: “Container ports around the world are dealing with backlogs in containers, originally stemming from the post-COVID-19 lockdowns when we saw surges in activities and pressures on cargo storage.

“Getting empty containers back to Asia and other locations has been challenging but the shipping industry is doing its best to meet global demands. This has been a real issue in North America and continental Europe.

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“A particular issue UK ports are also experiencing surrounds the lack of haulage.

“This has meant that some freight is not being collected as rapidly as they would normally be from port terminals of all types, not just container ports.

“This has resulted in some further delays for a range of ports and terminal operations are working with their customers to get these goods out of their ports to avoid further congestion.”

According to the latest data, at the container ship port in Southampton, there are currently 14,991 container imports being handled.

At the same time, there are 20,387 containers being exported.

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