- It’s not something you’d expect the world’s biggest companies such as WalMart and Home Depot to have on their books.
- But ships, especially mega containers, are something that many of them are adding to their inventory.
A Buzz news source explains why mega companies are buying ships.
Why ships?
In a nutshell, without an efficient (and cheap) means of getting your products from A to B, well, then your business is dead. The pandemic has put huge pressure on supply chains. Added to this, transport companies are trying to grapple with a massive container shortage.
To ensure timely and constant supplies, some companies are chartering their own vessels.
“We have a ship that’s solely going to be ours and it’s just going to go back and forth with 100 per cent dedicated to Home Depot,” Ted Decker, Home Depot COO said.
Hiring a ship is not cheap
According to NBC, chartering a vessel can cost up to $40,000 per day, which for your buck gets you about 3,000 six-meter containers. The prohibitive cost means that only the big players can afford to put a ship on their books, if they can manage to get a hold of one.
And getting into the shipping business is fraught.
Back in March of 2021, the Ever-Given, a 20,000-container cargo ship, lodged itself sideways in the Suez Canal disrupting global supply chains and costing millions of dollars per day in lost and delayed trade.
There are around 56,000 merchant ships ploughing the seas transporting everything from liquified gas, to refuse and containers full of food and household products.
Shipping dominates: around 80 per cent of goods around the world are delivered over sea routes.
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Source: Buzz
