Q4 2025 Port Congestion Analysis: Bigger Calls, Tighter Margins—and One Standout

Asian Hubs in Q4 2025: Bigger Ships, Thinner Margins
If your network touched Northeast or Southeast Asia in late 2025, the latest Hub Snapshot raises a critical question: are ports getting busier, or are they simply handling larger vessels with a shrinking margin for error?

The Headline Shift: Call Sizes vs. Functional Throughput
The data reveals a stark trend: average call sizes climbed year-over-year, the volume of calls dropped, but productivity didn’t keep pace. As we discussed at TPM Long Beach, this distinction is vital. My lens is ports because that is where theoretical TEU becomes actual network throughput. When call sizes spike without productivity gains, it indicates a capacity strain and a high potential for systemic delays.

Productivity: The Persistence Gap
The report tracks a softening in marine and berth productivity across most hubs. Shanghai stands out as the global exception, improving year-over-year on both metrics, a remarkable feat given the city also battled severe weather events and typhoon-related backlogs in late 2025. Elsewhere, we see a performance gap, a drag on system capacity that hasn't snapped back to pre-pandemic baselines. This gap explains why the market can look oversupplied in fleet deliveries on paper, yet feel incredibly tight in service.

Dwell Time: The Metric You Can’t Ignore
Dwell time is a primary capacity lever. In Q4 2025, transshipment dwell reached as high as 10 days in some hubs. Shanghai’s gains make it a bright spot, while Guangzhou recorded significant peaks in import and transshipment dwell. When containers sit longer, functional capacity shrinks. Congestion effectively removes capacity through Time Absorption; if a ship or box is idle, it is not moving revenue.

Looking into 2026: The Risk of Variance
The end-of-year snapshot set the stage for a volatile start to 2026. Between Red Sea diversions and compounding weather impacts, we estimate that 15–20% of global capacity was effectively neutralized at peak intervals during 2025. This shortfall was not due to a lack of physical vessels, but rather because systemic delays rendered them non-functional. As of March 2026, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has intensified this strain. For cargo owners, the message is clear: it is this extreme variance and unpredictability, rather than baseline demand, that destroys planning and drives up total landed costs.

Solutions: Unlocking Latent Capacity
Infrastructure is a slow fix. The fastest way to create capacity today is by recovering it from time, what we call Latent Capacity. By focusing on the Arrival Process Time (the gap between arriving at port limits and being fast at berth ready for operations) and reducing yard dwell, the industry can deliver more throughput with the same assets.

Click the link below to read the complete Q4 2025 port congestion analysis.

_{Technical analysis and data synthesis by Max Janthur, Port Performance Product Management Specialist.
Turloch Mooney, Head of Port Intelligence & Analytics, provides strategic direction and editorial oversight for this report series.}