- A shipping crisis is sparking shortages across industries.
- Shipping experts say the crisis will continue through 2022.
- A drop in demand will help ease the shipping crisis.
Industry experts and company executives say the shipping crisis will continue through 2022, reports Business Insider.
Spiking ocean rates
It’s good news for ocean shipping magnates. Ocean rates are currently “spiking,” according to Eytan Buchman, the chief marketing officer at global freight booking platform Freightos.com.
The price to send a shipping container from East Asia to the west coast of North America is nearly 1.8 times higher than it was at this time in 2019. To send one to the east coast, it’s 2.1 times more expensive.
It’s becoming more and more expensive to move goods from Asia to the US.
Freightos
But everyone else should prepare for several more months of frustration. We’ve already seen unexpected reverberations from the shipping crisis: skyrocketing freight rates have caused some pet food to vanish from shelves; a semiconductor shortage has idled auto factories; and chlorine shortages are disrupting pooltime dreams.
A quick and zesty explainer on our shipping calamity
Cargo ships move around 80% of global trade by volume. But a variety of factors is complicating the process in which containers full of factory-fresh goods – usually in Asia – are loaded onto ships, traverse the ocean, and are unloaded in, say, the ports of Los Angeles or Newark.
What’s causing our shipping crisis include sweeping trends and more quotidian factors. A decades-long movement in the ship-building industry to make massive ships is clashing with the fact that many of our ports can’t accommodate these behemoths.
Since early last year, when consumers worldwide were trapped at home, demand for durable goods skyrocketed – we started buying more stuff because we couldn’t go out to eat or travel.
And shipping containers are also a hot commodity right now… read more
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Source: Business Insider
