Cyclone Arnab halts Visakhapatnam, strains east-coast feeders

Visakhapatnam suspended all vessel handling on India’s east coast as Cyclone Arnab was reported to have made landfall, killing three people in Andhra Pradesh and damaging homes and utilities. The port is a critical feeder gateway for Maersk’s east-coast coverage, particularly cargo moving to and from Kolkata.

It handled 302,926 TEU year to date through September, compared with 308,861 TEU a year earlier. The decline is 5,935 TEU, or about 1.9%, but on a gateway carrying more than 300,000 TEU in nine months, even a short stoppage matters.

Against that local disruption, nearly two-thirds of the ocean capacity deployed between the Far East and Europe—63%—has returned to Suez Canal transit. Whether that broader capacity can ease India’s feeder queues is a separate question.

Which ports are affected, and which are reopening?

Vessel-handling services have been suspended or restricted at several major east-coast ports since Monday. In advance of landfall, Kuehne+Nagel said: “Potentially impacted container ports include Visakhapatnam, Gangavaram, and Krishnapatnam, all of which have received cyclone or storm warnings as Arnab approaches India’s east coast.”

Visakhapatnam initially shut all operations until further notice. One carrier official said: “Visakhapatnam terminals are slowly getting back to business, in tandem with government guidelines and updates.” The official added that authorities had instructed ports to remain suspended as contingency planning.

The storm was also reported to have made landfall that morning, bringing huge swells and gale winds across the region. Before landfall, Inchcape Shipping Services said Arnab had formed over the east-central and adjoining west-central Bay of Bengal.

Inchcape forecast the system would intensify into a very severe cyclonic storm before making landfall along the Andhra Pradesh and Yanam coasts on 28 October. Bangladesh’s authorities issued similar cautionary port alerts as the storm threatened gusty weather over the northern Bay of Bengal and adjoining coastal areas.

A reopening notice does not equal restored vessel capacity. Indian industry sources expect the suspensions to cause congestion and freight delays, though the scale will emerge only when terminals fully reopen and operators publish firm vessel and connection times.

What does this change for shippers?

For cargo moving through Visakhapatnam, the immediate change is uncertainty over sailing and connection times. Maersk feeder services linking the port with Kolkata face suspended or restricted handling, while calls to Gangavaram and Krishnapatnam may also be affected.

For carriers, the consequences are missed feeder connections, vessel omissions and routing changes, the same disruptions Kuehne+Nagel identified at Colombo. Forwarders face the familiar task of replacing firm dates with estimates, so terminal status and revised cutoffs need checking case by case.

What does this mean for shippers planning around Arnab? Longer voyages, missed transshipment windows and less reliable arrival times, at least until the feeder network absorbs the storm’s gaps. With no published reopening schedule or quantified delay for Visakhapatnam, an exact cost cannot yet be assigned.

Was congestion already building?

Several Indian ports were already under pressure before Arnab because delayed arrivals from Asian origin ports had bunched vessels. A Visakhapatnam-based ship agent called the cyclone disruption another blow to the supply chains.

The strain extends south to Sri Lanka, where Kuehne+Nagel reported an average vessel waiting time of two days across Colombo terminals. The company attributed the delay to transshipment congestion, missed feeder connections, vessel omissions and routing changes.

That does not mean every Indian port carries the same delay. It does mean an east-coast schedule can feed into a Colombo queue, and a Colombo omission can return as a missing connection in India. The chain is only as reliable as its least punctual handoff.

Does the Suez recovery offset the disruption?

Not for the affected feeders. A broader return of Far East-Europe ocean capacity to Suez routing does not supply a box to a closed Indian terminal or repair a missed Colombo connection.

Global capacity can be back while local capacity remains stranded. The distinction is less philosophical than it sounds.

Until Visakhapatnam publishes terminal reopening times and vessel queues normalize, east-coast feeder delays remain the likelier near-term outcome. Colombo’s two-day average shows the network has little room for another unplanned gap, even as 63% of Far East-Europe capacity returns to Suez routing.