When weather moves trade: two events compressed global port calls this week

Analysis. Maritime Data Platform port call data, week ending 11 August 2026. Voyages: Marine Benchmark.

Global

Global port calls held at 7,900 to 8,100 per day through to 5 August, then broke from 7 August, falling to 6,582 on 9 August before a partial recovery to around 7,200 by the 11th.

Every other region was flat. The whole decline traces to two concurrent weather events: a typhoon in East Asia and record low water on the Rhine. China's July exports were up 23.9% year on year, ahead of forecasts (CNBC).

Daily port calls by region, 13 July to 11 August. The break from 7 August is the two weather events.

East Asia: Typhoon Dolphin

Typhoon Dolphin passed over Okinawa on 7 August, forcing evacuation orders for around 260,000 residents and the suspension of work at nine Toyota factories (The Japan Times, The Watchers). The storm's track is unmistakable in our country-level data. Comparing 1 to 6 August with the typhoon window of 7 to 11 August:

Country	Pre	Typhoon window	Change
China	5,249	2,850	-46%
Taiwan	487	276	-43%
Japan	6,847	4,495	-34%
South Korea	1,534	1,035	-33%
Hong Kong	326	255	-22%

East Asia daily arrivals by country, 1 to 11 August.

The Yangtze Delta, the direct landfall zone, effectively shut. Jiangyin recorded one arrival against a normal 55. Nanjing and Ningbo (Zhenhai) fell 93%, Shanghai 75%, Ningbo (Beilun) 78%. Shanghai and Beilun alone account for over 600 lost arrivals in the window. Japan's falls were led by Osaka at -45%, Chiba at -40% and Kobe at -32%.

Hardest-hit ports, arrivals pre (1 to 6 August) vs during (7 to 11 August).

Shanghai was already running 5 to 8 day waits before the storm, Ningbo 2 to 3, and carriers expect vessel bunching to affect schedule reliability for several weeks as schedules are restored.

Northwest Europe: the Rhine at a 146-year low

The Rhine is at its lowest level since records began. The Kaub gauge, the bottleneck near Koblenz, hit 17cm this week against a seasonal norm of 150 to 300cm, and the waterways administration expects it to fall further (gCaptain).

The restrictions in force:

• Standard 1,200-tonne barges are loading around 180 tonnes, roughly 15% of capacity

• 500 TEU container barges are running under 100 TEU

• ARA to Karlsruhe voyage time has stretched from around 2 days to around 5

• Freight south of Kaub is reported around EUR 150 per tonne against EUR 20 in normal water (Argus)

• MSC's Rhine surcharge is EUR 44 per container to truck and EUR 50 to rail, as cargo shifts to road and rail (The Loadstar)

Daily port calls, ARA ports vs Rhine inland, 13 July to 11 August.

ARA vs Rhine inland, week on week port call change.

Rotterdam port calls were up 3.3% week on week while Rhine inland fell 5.9%, with the upper Rhine ports worst: Mannheim from 53 calls to 34, Strasbourg 29 to 16. With barges loading at a fraction of capacity, operators are running more trips to move the same cargo and shifting the remainder to sea, road and rail. That lifts call counts at the seaports while volumes fall.

One caveat: port call data counts vessel arrivals, not cargo volume. On the Rhine, more calls per tonne means the decline in call counts understates the fall in throughput. The real freight impact is worse than the charts show.

Port call data: Maritime Data Platform. Voyages: Marine Benchmark.