With the Port of Baltimore’s main permanent shipping channel having fully reopened, operations have quickly ramped back up.
The 700ft wide and 50ft deep channel was restored to its original capacity on June 11, more than 10 weeks after the Dali container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, cutting off most access to the port as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crews worked to clear the wreckage.
While the main channel was closed to commercial vessels, supply chain visibility platform Project 44 tracked significant spikes in dwell times at the Port of Baltimore for both imports and exports. Prior to the bridge crash on March 26, median export dwell times sat around 10 days, while import dwell times were roughly four days. By mid-April, median export dwell times peaked at just under 15 days; median import dwell times topped out even higher, reaching 34 days at one point in the month, before dipping back down to normal by May as temporary shipping channels began to reopen. Dwell times have since stabilized across the board, having returned to their pre-closure levels with full capacity now restored to the port.
“Between the berthing and import dwell stability, this shows that the Port of Baltimore has been able to reopen without disruptions in labor or operations,” Project 44 said.
Perhaps the largest impact felt by the shutdown came in the form of demurrage fees, which Project 44 estimates at as much as $85 million combined across all importers. As for rerouted vessels, 46% of additional volume from the closure went to the Port of New York, while 20% went to Norfolk, and 9% to Newark-Elizabeth. Project 44 says it did not observe any operational issues at East Coast ports that absorbed the rerouted shipments.
