Terminal storage charge: the port clock beside demurrage

Most importers learn the phrase when a second invoice arrives. The carrier’s bill for demurrage was expected, argued over, sometimes partly waived. Then the terminal’s storage bill lands, for the same container and an overlapping set of days, and nobody on the desk can immediately say whether it is a duplicate.

It is not a duplicate. It is rent for the ground.

What is being charged for

A terminal storage charge is levied by the marine terminal operator for an import container occupying its yard after the free dwell time expires. The carrier’s demurrage is levied for the container itself. Two assets, two owners, two bills.

The cleanest statement of the split sits in the American billing rule, which defines both charges in one sentence and separates them by object rather than by biller. Under 46 CFR § 541.3, demurrage or detention means charges assessed by carriers or terminal operators “related to the use of marine terminal space (e.g., land) or shipping containers, but not including freight charges”. Marine terminal space, or shipping containers. Land, or box.

Outside the United States the two are usually billed by different parties under different names, which is why a desk that has only ever seen one word for it is caught out.

The published one and the private one

The practical difference is not the amount. It is whether you can look it up.

A terminal’s scale of rates is a document. It is approved, dated, and applies to every user of that terminal on that day, which means a desk can know its storage exposure on a lane before the vessel sails. The carrier’s free time cannot be looked up at all — it is a term of your contract, and two importers moving identical boxes on the same vessel routinely have different allowances.

Three days, or ten

The numbers are further apart than most desks expect, and the gap is not explained by the size of the port.

At Jebel Ali, an ordinary import full container gets 10 free days, counted from the date of discharge from the vessel, then AED 82 a day up to 20ft and AED 164 over 20ft for five days, rising to AED 153 and AED 306 thereafter. The rates are in DP World’s published UAE Region tariff book, and the Jebel Ali port page carries the bands in full.

At Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal, the import free dwell is 3 days. After that, days 4 to 15 cost US$9.33 a day up to 20ft, US$18.66 above 20ft and up to 40ft, and US$27.99 above 40ft; days 16 to 30 double those; beyond 30 days they double again, to US$37.28, US$74.56 and US$111.84. Those are the rates in the edition indexed by 0.39% with effect from 1 May 2026; the tariff is re-indexed annually, so check the current edition before planning against them. The port’s other four container terminals publish their own storage tariffs, with their own free periods, set out on the Nhava Sheva port page.

Both terminals are operated by DP World, which JNPA’s own terminal listing confirms for NSICT. Same operator, one ocean apart, and the free allowance differs by a factor of more than three. Whatever number your desk carries in its head for “how long we have at the port”, it is right for at most one lane.

The clocks do not even count the same days

This is the part that survives into the invoice dispute, and almost nothing written about demurrage mentions it.

NSICT’s scale of rates says the storage period “shall be reckoned from the day following the day of landing”, and that free dwell time “shall be exclusive of customs notified holidays and port non-working days”. Jebel Ali counts from the date of discharge. A carrier’s demurrage free time is ordinarily counted in straight calendar days from discharge.

So on one container you can have two free periods that begin on different days and consume days at different rates. A public holiday costs you a demurrage day and no storage day. The last free day you wrote on the file is one of two, and a desk working to a single date is working to the wrong one about half the time.

Three further clauses in the same section are worth reading before an invoice arrives: hazardous containers attract storage 25% above the ordinary slab, over-dimensional and over-high containers three times it, and charges denominated in US dollars are recovered in rupees at the reference rate prevailing on the date the vessel entered port limits — not the date of the bill.

When it is not payable

Storage is waivable on grounds written into the tariff, which is a different thing from negotiation.

NSICT’s own notes say users “will not have to pay storage charges for the period during which NSICT is not in a position to deliver/ shift the containers when requested by the users”, and the section sets out when storage ceases on containers seized or confiscated by customs. Those are clauses you can cite by number, and they sit beside the Indian customs route to a waiver on the carrier side, which runs through a detention certificate.

None of that helps with the ordinary case. Storage that accrued because the document pack was not ready is payable, and arguing it is a waste of a week.

What a desk does about it

Hold both tariffs per lane, and derive two dates rather than one.

The terminal’s number can be read off a published document and stored against the port. The carrier’s has to come out of the service contract and be stored against the carrier, the lane and the equipment type. Then the deadline that matters is the earlier of the two, and every document in the pack gets a due date counted back from it.

That is the arithmetic. The work is getting the pack finished before the date, which means chasing a supplier, a bank, a forwarder and a broker who between them owe you six documents and none of whom reports to you. Software that counts free time tells you the date is coming. It is the chasing that changes whether you make it.