Typhoon Dolphin Disrupts 2.4M TEUs at Chinese Ports

Typhoon Dolphin, the strongest cyclone to hit China so far in 2026, struck China's eastern coast on August 9, causing the suspension of terminal operations at Shanghai and Ningbo on August 7 and 8 as vessels were pre-emptively ordered to leave exposed berths and anchorage areas. The storm left more than 2.4 million TEUs of containership capacity stranded in its aftermath, according to shipping data, with the resulting congestion spreading beyond the directly affected ports to Southern China and weighing on global supply chains.

Almost a half-million TEUs of capacity at three of China's main ports went by the boards in the aftermath of Typhoon Dolphin, with Asia–Latin America and Asia–Europe services the most heavily disrupted, according to the Journal of Commerce. The congestion arrived just as carriers and shippers were recovering from two prior weather-related disruptions: Typhoon Bavi, which had forced closures at Shanghai, Ningbo, and Qingdao approximately a month earlier, and Typhoon Noul, which closed ports in Hong Kong and Shenzhen on July 25.

At the peak of post-Dolphin disruptions, seven ultra-large container vessels with capacities exceeding 20,000 TEU were awaiting berthing at Ningbo alone, including the 24,188-TEU OOCL Felixstowe and the 24,116-TEU MSC Raya. According to data, 117 vessels had returned to the anchorage area of Shanghai port by August 12, and 60 to Ningbo. The 7-day average vessel waiting time in Ningbo as of August 12 was 2.26 days, an increase of nearly 15 hours compared to the prior week. Hapag-Lloyd reported a 72-hour wait at Shanghai's Yangshan deepwater port for vessels on Gemini services, while ships on non-Gemini services faced waits of up to six days.

As a consequence of the successive storm disruptions, global containership congestion surged to 4.18 million TEU — representing 12.2% of the global fleet — with North Asia accounting for 54% of all global anchorage backlogs. In Shanghai alone, waiting containerships reached 139 vessels — a near 5.8-fold increase over two weeks. Liner alliances skipped and omitted port calls to regain schedule integrity, resulting in an estimated 500,000 TEU of lost or omitted capacity across Asia–Europe, Asia–Latin America, and Transpacific trade lanes.