Shippers confident Japanese ports will continue operating

Container freight consultancy group Alphaliner said at least six medium-sized container ports were reported to be badly damaged and would be out of operation for the next few months.

The ports of Hachinohe, Ofunato, Sendai, Onahama, Hitachinaka and Kashima were all affected, although they handled less than 2 percent of Japan's total container volumes, Alphaliner said.

Singapore-based shipping group Neptune Orient reported some early disruption in Yokohama due to power outages and a brief closure of its Tokyo office, but said business was now back to normal.

“We operate marine terminals in Kobe and Yokohama, where our ships call. They are fully functional, and cargo operations are ongoing,” Neptune Orient spokesman Mike Zampa said on Thursday, adding it was too early to say if volumes were below normal.

Maersk Line, a unit of Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk and the world's biggest container shipping company, suspended service to the ports of Sendai, Onahama and Hachinohe.

But it said the ports in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka and Hakata were safe, with no damage reported to its equipment there, and it was operating as normal from these.

“It is still possible to book cargoes from Japan. In the north, ports and terminals have been hit. There is some industry up there, and that is obviously impacted; roads have been hit, so cargoes are not moving,” Maersk spokesman Michael Storgaard said.

Korea's Hanjin Shipping told a similar story. It said it had seen little impact on its container traffic to Japan through its terminals in Tokyo and Osaka.

Hanjin's shipping between South Korea and Japan accounts for only 1 percent of its total business, and its trans-Pacific shipping which passes through Japan was unlikely to be affected, a spokeswoman for the group said.

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