The UK port of Felixstowe is coming under heavy criticism from freight forwarders due to congestion and delays.
The British International Freight Association (BIFA) labelled service at the Hutchison Ports terminal "appalling".
The group said its members could not send empty boxes to the port until 23 September.
BIFA director general Robert Keen added: "The operational performance at Felixstowe has been very challenging for some time, but over the last 24 hours the issues have escalated to a level that could be disastrous for our members’ businesses, which have already been hard hit by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic."
He talked of "huge congestion" at Felixstowe, leading to containers being unable to be collected or returned.
"Empty containers will have to be restituted to inland container parks, which will lead to an escalation in haulage costs for members using merchant haulage," Keen said.
He added that quay rent and demurrage issues could also result and would be difficult to pass on to members’ customers.
Grayling given advisory role
Felixstowe is one of the country's busiest ports. Its parent Hutchison Ports opened itself up to controversy on Thursday with the appointment of former UK transport minister Chris Grayling to an advisory role.
The MP who is famous for awarding a Brexit ferry contract to a company with no ships will earn £100,000 ($129,000) over a year for seven hours work a week.
Keen blamed the current problems at the port on its use of a new terminal operating system in 2018.
He called for an extension of free-time for quay rent and demurrage.
Hutchison said in a statement it was currently experiencing a high demand for both road and rail capacity.
"The situation has been caused by a sharp spike in import container volumes, along with a high proportion of late vessel arrivals," the company added.
Volumes higher than normal
The weekly import volume for the last two weeks has been over 30% higher than average levels.
"This is exacerbated by unusually high levels of empty containers at the port and the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis on resource availability," Hutchison said.
"As a result, our service standards are not currently where we would like them to be and we apologise for any inconvenience caused."
To address the problem, it is increasing truck booking capacity to more than 4,300 vehicles per day, opening on Sunday for collections and working with customers to "temporarily slow down and reduce the number of empty containers being returned to the port by rail and road, to ensure we do not run out of storage space".
Another 100 drivers will also be recruited at the terminal.
