What Happened To The Crazy Ocean Freight?

Economic Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 at the end of 2019, many countries have started to carry out national lockdown and stop the production of goods, which ultimately caused termination on economic growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the global shortage of freight containers, resulted in serious inflation in transportation and container prices and increased detention period of products at the inland depot.

The emergence of the new strain "Omicron" has intensified concerns about global economic recovery. The global epidemic prevention and control situation are still relatively severe.

Labour Shortage

With the shortage of the US labor market and surging inflation, employees are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the current wage and welfare levels. Recently, employees from many American giants have gone on strike, including snack food company Mondelez International, commercial truck manufacturer Volvo, and breakfast cereal company Kellogg. In October, more than 100,000 employees in the United States set off a wave of strikes on Twitter. They came from all walks of life, such as telecommunications, transportation, television, mining, manufacturing, music, metals, petroleum, and even academia. The strikers also included longshoremen at the port which prompted cargo backlog in inland depot.

The Impact of Containers on Rising Freight and Cost

From daily food such as rice, flour and coarse grains, to commodities such as textiles, household appliances and their parts, wood, and clothing, almost all goods are transported by sea. The facts have proved that due to the impact of the COVID-19, the stability of this transportation mode has been severely influenced by this historical event. Now containers have become scarce resources due to poor turnover, making container freight more and more expensive, and commodity prices are also rapidly increased.

Such unprecedented event and situation have left a global shortage of containers, which has had a domino effect down the supply chain.