Dozens of ships carrying more than half a million cargo containers on Hanjin Shipping vessels were denied access to ports because of uncertainty about who would pay docking fees, container-storage and unloading fees in the week after the South Korean carrier filed for bankruptcy, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Hong Kong Shippers’ Council said that port’s local terminals were charging shippers a special fee of $1,260 per container to off-load. Cargo owners reported similar fees at other Asian and European ports.
Though Hanjin accounts for only 3.2% of global container capacity, it accounts for a bigger slice of the merchandise shipped from Asia to the US – trade that begins to build in September as the winter holiday shopping season looms.
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