In 2026, port congestion in Southeast Asia will become the norm. How can cross-border maritime shipping avoid delays and empty container risks?

From March 2026, the Southeast Asia core hub port will continue to be under pressure due to the circumvention of ships on the Middle East route, the concentrated shipment of Indonesia's Eid al-Fitr, and the influence of multiple factors such as the Southeast Asia e-commerce peak season. The congestion rate of Port Klang in Malaysia once reached 50%, the congestion rate of Port of Singapore returned to 36%, the utilization rate of container yards exceeded 90%, the longest delay of ship berthing was 7 days, and a large number of cross-border sellers encountered the problem of ship dumping and order shortage.

Port congestion brings a chain of industry problems: the price of cargo space increases slightly, cargo in port causes additional storage fees, and e-commerce stores have a large number of refund and negative reviews due to delayed delivery. Market research shows that small and medium-sized sellers relying on a single transshipment port and a single route are the most severely affected, and the supply chain's ability to withstand risks is weak. In response to the current market situation, the logistics industry in Southeast Asia has summarized four practical risk avoidance schemes.

First, choose the domestic direct express channel as a priority, reduce the Singapore transshipment link, and Qihang and other leading express logistics companies sign fixed quota with multiple shipping companies in advance, prioritize the release of cabinets in peak season, and significantly reduce the probability of dumping cabinets; Second, adopt the mode of shipping in batches to avoid shipping a large number of goods at once, thus dispersing the risk of delays caused by port congestion; Third, the domestic multi-warehouse scattered inventory, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Yiwu warehouse staggered shipment, balance the port cargo flow; Fourth, the combination of sea and air transportation channels is used, and the hot products of e-commerce with time-sensitive delivery are switched to air transportation lines to balance the cost and delivery time.

In the long run, the short-term congestion of Southeast Asian ports will be difficult to fully alleviate, and the resilience of the supply chain has become the core competitiveness of enterprises going out to sea. Foreign trade and cross-border sellers need to abandon the thinking of choosing logistics only by looking at low prices, and focus on examining the service provider's cargo capacity reserve, multi-route interline transportation capacity, local emergency customs clearance facilities, and relying on stable and compliant special lines to ensure the controllable timeliness of goods.