11/1/2022 0 Comments Ships waiting to port map![]() ![]() The backlog of ships waiting to enter California’s two largest ports has hit a fresh record as labor shortages continue to roil the global supply chain and threaten holiday gift-giving.Īs of Monday, 100 vessels of all kinds were at anchor or in a holding area waiting to enter the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, topping the previous record of 97 vessels set on Sept. I paid $13K for a truckload of lost packages - but will get triple that back Solomon Islands asks navies not to send ships pending review And we are going to see less choice in product variety.New York now the busiest shipping port in the US, leapfrogging this stateĪmtrak cancels all long-distance trains ahead of impending rail worker strike “We are going to see rolling bottlenecks for a long time,” she said. In the meantime, consumers will likely see the effects of the continued ebb and flow in trade, said Nada Sanders, professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University. The port is already developing 145 acres to handle containers, and officials announced Tuesday that it is investing $34 million to add 230 acres more.īut the expansion will take months, and, moreover, the imbalances in the supply chain are global. ![]() While Savannah isn’t the only port being overwhelmed with shipments, it is one of the few with room to expand. Meanwhile, front-line workers have been hard to find, making it harder and more costly to handle goods in warehouses or move them by truck. ![]() Some Americans are still stay-at-home employees, which changes their purchases. That gives them one less issue to manage come the shopping season.”įactories in some parts of Asia are still being shut down to stifle the virus. “So, retailers are building safety stock. “Holidays kind of have a ‘hard deadline’ in the sense that a holiday gift delivered late simply will not do,” he said. Yet if ever in the year retailers want to minimize disruption, this is it, said Aleksandar Tomic, associate dean for strategy, innovation and technology at Boston College. “With the more complex toys and electronics, we may have shortages,” he said. Among foreign-made goods, the most likely shortages are in goods that depend on silicon chips. This holiday’s shortages are least likely in products made in the United States, said Osadchiy. That scarcity has meant shutdowns in auto assembly plants, including the massive Kia plant in West Point. The past few months, the highest-profile shortage has been in production of vehicles, which cannot get enough of the silicon chips used in the on-board computers. What if retailers buy the wrong goods? What if each of their efforts adds up to too much buying? That could mean dropping prices, layoffs and more disruption in the supply chain. The rush to stock up has its own danger, Osadchiy said. “Right now, it’s not predictable at all.” “We used to have an efficient system where everything on the supply chain was synchronized,” said Nikolay Osadchiy, an associate professor who teaches supply chain management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. One of the casualties is “just in time” inventories - the pre-pandemic practice in which businesses kept little stock on hand to keep costs down and were able to quickly replenish that stock as needed. But those efforts are complicated since the world’s supply chain is still struggling to rebalance itself after repeated disruptions more than 18 months into a pandemic. With the overall economy growing, incomes up for most people, and discretionary travel still subpar, there is a lot of money for holiday buying, economists say.ĭespite a still-uncontrolled coronavirus, many retailers are betting on a robust holiday season - and that means trying to stock up in advance. “The backlogs and delays in ports are very worrisome,” said Pinar Keskinocak, a professor in Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. When ships and trucks and people have to wait, the whole system becomes less efficient and more costly. At the giant West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, more than 60 ships have been lined up at times this month, part of an unprecedented global bottleneck in moving goods. Much of the demand now is pegged to the approaching holidays.īut moving all of that cargo isn’t easy. About 65% of containers passing the port are imports bound for American companies and consumers. ![]()
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