Christmas toys delay warning as cargo ships turned away from UK ports

A shipping company has warned there may be a delay in Christmas presents this year due to a backlog of cargo at UK ports.

Hull Live reports the Danish shipping giant Maersk, is having to reroute it's vessels from Felixstowe, the largest commercial shipping port in the UK, after it run out of storage capacity.

The port usually deals with around 36 per cent of Britain's container imports and exports, such as toys and electrical goods, but they have had to reroute shipping vessels to smaller parts of Europe to unload.

The warnings comes as a shortage of HGV drivers across Scotland and the rest of the UK has impacted certain areas of the supply chain and there are fears that it could add to the pre-Christmas rush.

One shipping boss told The Times: "I don't want to sound like a Grinch but there are going to be gaps on shelves this Christmas."

The news comes amidst other warnings that some ports across the UK are managing access to some space with “short-term restrictions” in a bid to ease congestion issues.

Co-chairman of the Conservative Party Oliver Dowden has addressed the issues and he explained that the shortage of HGV drivers has added to the pressure, but has said that the Government was “working through these challenges."

Despite the current build up and backlog, Oliver has reassured shoppers that Father Christmas will be able to make it on time to make sure the presents are under the tree.

He told Sky News: “The situation is improving, I’m confident that people will be able to get their toys for Christmas. Some buy people buy very early for Christmas, my wife is quite an early Christmas buyer, others buy later. I would say just buy as you do normally.”

Asked if Father Christmas would visit, Mr Dowden said: “Yes, I have children myself and they can be (comfortable) on that front.”

Lars Mikael Jensen, head of global ocean network at Maersk, has also addressed how the backlog of cargo has impacted the time it takes for containers to be emptied and packed up again.

“We had to stop operations on a ship because there was nowhere to discharge the containers,” he said.

“Felixstowe is among the top two or three worst-hit terminals.

“We are having to deviate some of the bigger ships away from Felixstowe and relay some of the smaller ships for the cargo.

"We did it for a little while over the summer and now we're starting to do it again."

A spokesperson for the port has also said: "The pre-Christmas peak, combined with haulage shortages, congested inland terminals, poor vessel schedule reliability and the pandemic, has resulted in a build-up of containers at the port."

They continued to say that, despite the challenges, the situation is "improving" and there is beginning to be more space for the first time since July when the bottleneck hit, but that retailers will have to prioritise what they ship due to the congestion.

They added: "We are working closely with all our shipping lines customers to accommodate their vessels. This can be challenging as a high proportion of ships are off schedule due to the well-publicised global supply chain issues and imports continue to arrive faster than the UK supply chain can handle them due to the well documented haulier shortage.

The backlog is not the only concern, as the shortage of HGV drivers has also impacted the cargo disruption at UK ports.

Tim Morris, chief executive of the UK Major Ports Group, has explained that action has been taken to deal with the issues of the past year, but it has been "exacerbated by well-publicised issues impacting all UK supply chains, notably shortages of HGV drivers."

It has been reported that the UK currently has a shortage of 100,000 HGV drivers which has been impacting deliveries deliveries and supply chains across the country.

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