The $6.9 Billion Cost of Non-Automated Port Operations: Why Delays Are Becoming More Expensive

Think of a bulk carrier which arrives at a port, and instead of moving to a berth, it has to drop its anchor off the coast and wait.

A similar incident happened at a major bulk terminal on the east coast of South Africa, where some ships had to wait for 26 days to get a berth, against an industry benchmark of 50 to 67 hours.

This delay was due to many different causes, including non-availability of berths for a large bulk carrier, or a shortage of tugboats at the facility, disruptions caused by powerful winds or rough seas, mismatched scheduling rules and repairs which had to be stopped midway due to missing parts.

Without a centralised system which would let different parts of a port share information in real-time, issues which can be solved easily can easily compound into bigger problems, taking weeks to resolve.

The consequences are not limited to the operation itself, rather affects other tasks as well, much like a domino effect.

If container terminals, bulk, breakbulk and RORO terminals operating at a single port do not share information or coordinate, the operational delays could lead to a loss of billions of dollars.

This is where automation comes in to help port operators and cargo owners resolve issues in real-time without letting things pile up and spread through inland transport, warehouses and eventually to retail shelves.

Without a system which oversees everything in real-time, ports end up solving issues only after they happen, unlike a modern terminal operating system, which also analyses and predicts issues in advance based on current operational information that it collects continuously.

Where Does the Time Actually Go?

According to UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2025, container ships spent an average of 0.8 days per port call in 2024.

The Container Port Performance Index 2025, which is published by the World Bank and S&P Global, also reported declining performance of ports worldwide compared to 2024.

Dry bulk carriers were the slowest of all 4 vessel categories at 2.7 days; tankers averaged 1.5 days, and breakbulk carriers were fastest at 0.9 days.

Infyz Digital Twin Solution In Real Time

Cargo ships spent more time waiting outside ports, and the median waiting time increased from 8.7 hours in 2023 to 13.4 hours in 2024, with ports in developing countries recording nearly twice the wait seen in developed countries (10.9 hours compared with 6.4 hours). The trend continued in 2025.

In the Mediterranean, average anchorage time rose to about 10.5 hours in the 4th quarter of 2025, up 33% from a year earlier because of geopolitical conflicts and regional instability.

The pandemic also contributed to delays, but it was not the only reason, given that bigger ships, unpredictable cargo volumes and manual processes are still pushing delays at many ports.

Terminal Type	2024 Turnaround Benchmark	Worst-Case Observed	Primary Cost Driver
Container	0.8 days average call (worsening year-on-year)	Detention charges of up to $2,478 per container over 14 days in New York	Demurrage & detention fees
Bulk carrier	2.7 days median — slowest of all four categories	Up to 26 days at anchor, one sampled berth, Southern African bulk terminal	Vessel-owner voyage losses, port congestion charges
Breakbulk	0.9 days median (fastest — but understated, see below)	~1.4 days, East African comparison terminal; multi-day at under-resourced berths	Under-measured: no economy-scale automation yet
RoRo	Deep-sea RoRo berth time ~<1 day (U.S.) to ~1.5 days (Europe)	Multi-day or multi-week delays during congestion spikes (>10 days in Barcelona, up to 30 days elsewhere in early 2026)	Data silos and manual inspection bottlenecks. Berth utilisation>90% in busy hubs

Standing Still Is Getting More Expensive

Container terminals have been the first to invest in automation, yet call lengths worsened through 2024 even though the dwell times, which is the time a container remains in the yard, improved from 4.2 to 3.1 days.

This shows that the real issue is that though yard operations are getting streamlined, berth planning and scheduling are not following the same path since they run on separate systems which do not share data with each other.

This tells us that when automation is applied across a port’s terminals and in every operation, the results can be truly transformative. A centralised system with a yard map which refreshes every 10 seconds using the same database as berth planning can give planners a real-time view of operations rather than depending on an outdated sheet. Infyz Solutions is one of the pioneers working towards this model.

India’s nationwide Port Community System reduced ship turnaround at principal ports from 94 hours to 48.06 hours, recording a 49% reduction in a span of 10 years, by adopting similar systems at major terminals.

Bulk and Breakbulk: Where the Data Runs Out

Bulk carriers recorded the worst median turnaround time at 2.7 days in 2024, and many terminals in South Africa have waiting times of around 26 days at some of the least performing berths.

The cause for this is not one, but rather several, such as obsolete infrastructure, shortage of equipment, tugs and pilot boats, no weather buggers, poor planning and scheduling due to manual handling of operations and lastly, parts which take weeks to arrive.

The delay has a direct impact as ships sit idle, and shippers have to incur some of the region’s highest handling costs, which then pressurises charter rates and prices of the commodities once they reach the market.

Though Breakbulk looks like the best-performing segment with a waiting time of just 0.9 days, it is also the least standardised segment when it comes to reporting, so the worst terminals in this segment do not show up in global data.

Paper-based inspections and shortages of tugs led to a waiting time of 1.4 days at a terminal in East Africa, which is 50% more than the median time.

No automation case study on the scale of India’s PCS exists for breakbulk because too few operators have automated consistently enough to measure it.

RoRo Terminals: Efficient on Paper, Not in Practice

RoRo is the hardest category to quantify. Industry analysis consistently flags outdated systems, data silos, and gate bottlenecks without a definitive global delay figure.

One peer-reviewed study found that automated electric terminal tractors could cut carbon dioxide emissions by up to 40%, but warned that automation without matching charging infrastructure can slow down the cargo unloading process.

In many RoRo ports, vehicle inspections logged on clipboards decrease efficiency and increase operational costs, which goes unmeasured.

Automated ports use OCR and camera systems at terminal gates to auto-capture container and chassis details, logging damage straight into the operational database.

Infyz already runs this live at commercial RoRo terminals, cutting driver turnaround and liability dispute times.

When Delays Turn Into a $6.9 Billion Bill

U.S regulators estimated that shipping lines collected roughly $6.9 billion in demurrage and detention fees between 2020 and 2022 (sampled across 60 major ports and 8 lines), with the average per-container fee rising 12% to $664 before easing about 25% by 2023.

We cannot blame everything on the “automation gap”, as other factors like labour shortages, strikes, and customs also play a role. However, container dwell time is precisely the metric that improves when gate processing, customs clearance, and yard visibility move from paper to digital.

The 2023 study shows that if a container is lying for 14 days in New York, the penalty runs about $2,478, but in Busan, which is an automated port, the penalty is much less. This clearly explains that this huge cost gap stems from a lack of digital integration and gate congestion rather than geography.

The Compliance Deadline Has Already Arrived

Now the stakeholders cannot think only of the commercial cost. Since January 1, 2024, the IMO’s Maritime Single Window has made electronic data exchange mandatory for all member states. Ports and terminals which still rely on paper-based, manual processes for cargo and vessels are falling behind a binding international digitalisation standard.

Every manual link in port operations and scattered data, whether it is a demurrage invoice, a missed berth window, or a shifted booking pattern, eventually translates into cost that remains unseen, yet significantly erodes the margins.

Terminals adopting integrated platforms like Infyz’s iTOMS are the ones positioned to turn faster turnarounds, lower costs, and compliance into a measurable advantage.