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Chaos at sea, problems in warehouses!
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Chaos at sea, problems in warehouses!
Supply problems began as early as March 2020. Some Chinese retailers and manufacturers have played the perfect game, gaining huge margins on many products.
Especially protective equipment such as masks and the like were shocked. In Slovenia, the idea spread that masks could not be obtained and therefore the state had to conclude long-term contracts with some contractors, who also charged 4 € + VAT per mask (current selling price of the mask is 0.03 € for surgical and 0,17 € for FFP mask).
We importers wondered, what’s going on since we’ve been receiving mask ads from every other store in China. Such situations happen when journalists blindly trust certain individuals who then get involved in business. where they have neither knowledge nor experience nor integrity.
Various transport providers have taken advantage of the situation in the same way. The prices of shipping containers, air transport, truck transport and other modes of transport have increased by 5 times in some places.
Prices have not dropped significantly over the next two years as we are customers dependent on suppliers from China and other Asian countries. An additional problem began to be posed by mega companies, mostly from the US. Wallmart, Amazon and similar companies overpaid air travel and transported products such as whirlpools and other products that have a higher margin and can bear the higher cost of transportation. This way of selling, of course, has a negative effect on all other sellers, who then have to overpay for transport for ordinary products ...
Due to their size and financial strength, the aforementioned companies began to enter the transport market and hire entire ships and organize transport routes themselves. This gives them additional market dominance, but the situation is raising prices for us, as ships have a long production period and are in short supply, given the global economy.
For a long time now, China has been slowly stopping imports of certain materials (especially garbage, which we have been able to export to them for years and served very well in the process of avoiding responsibility). This combined with the closure of some parts of the world, another unforeseen problem has arisen. Namely the locations of the containers. As China opened earlier than the US there was a delay.
The delay then became problematic as larger types of ships began to accumulate in larger ports, which had to wait their turn because some parts were overdeveloped in terms of their ability to move goods.
As if the situation was not already tense enough, it is happening in some parts of the world that truck drivers are simply not returning to their jobs. Poor pay, difficult working conditions, absence from home and the like certainly contribute to the lack of suitable staff.
The number of containers in traffic is also limited. Amazaon and Wallmart have been producing their containers for some time, which is again evident in the world market, space on ships, etc. All of the above reasons and any other reason build a jigsaw puzzle of problems. Unfortunately, we do not see the situation changing in the short term at the moment, but we can hope.
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