Clearly 2021 was a difficult year for global supply chains, with major disruptions and bottlenecks around the globe. Hopes were then placed on 2022. However, the start of the year has left a lot to be desired, especially due to the bad news coming from China. Reason? the same since 2020: the pandemic. Maersk, on January 11, in a statement to its clients admitted that “unfortunately, 2022 has not started as we expected. The pandemic is still ongoing and unfortunately we are seeing new outbreaks that affect our ability to move your cargo. General illness remains high as key ports in key regions are seeing new spikes in COVID-19."

“The situation is especially difficult at several hub ports and terminals of entry,” the statement said, focusing on the situation in China where the city of Beilun is also experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak. “Of Ningbo's five container terminals, three of them are located near the epidemic area, but they are operating so far without any positive cases being reported. The arrivals and departures of the ships have functioned normally up to now, as well as the loading and unloading activities”, the information clarifies.

It is further detailed that after a few days with revised operations, container entry and exit activities have also returned to normal, with a combined yard density of around 75%.

However, the outlook is not so encouraging in the ground transportation service. Notably in Jinhua Yongkang, Beilun medium-high risk area and area outside Zhejiang province, highway mode is suspended under the strict regulation of China's “Zero COVD” prevention policy, which has slowed down the transport of manufactured products and raw materials through one of the most important ports in the world. Added to this is the stoppage of operations in some yards and container storage centers in the port of Ningbo.

The situation is to be feared, a one-week delay at the Ningbo port could cost US $ 4.000 billion, including exports of circuit boards and clothing, according to a report by Bloomberg. Some polyester factories in that city have stopped working because they cannot receive raw materials by truck or ship goods.

Road deliveries of liquefied natural gas, an important fuel for industries not connected to pipelines, have also slowed.

Although Maersk, as a palliative measure for this situation, has the operations of its intercontinental and maritime railways, in addition to the barge service as alternative solutions; points out that the situation evolves every day and that "this could include slowing down maritime traffic to minimize queues, opening substitute container depots or moving more cargo through alternative modes."

It should be remembered that Ningbo is one of the world's leading container gateways and a crucial part of the supply chains that connect factories in eastern China to consumers of cars, machines, electronics and toys in the US. , Europe and other places.

The port was partially closed for weeks last August following a Covid-19 outbreak, causing a slowdown in exports, disruptions and congestion on supply lines.

Is the supply chain to blame?

Two years of tensions in the supply chain and a third beginning has led to the agreement that one of the great lessons of this pandemic is the need to have more resilient supply chains, a quality that they lacked in 2021 with medium times They doubled in shipping from China to the US and container shipping rates increasing from 4% of their value to almost 20%. On the other hand, the number of vessels waiting to unload at any given time went from one or two in the (northern) summer of 2020 to a high of 82 in November.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, often cited as examples of the breakdown of the international supply chain, in the last two decades, doubled the number of cargo containers moved each year, from almost 4,9 million in 2000 to more than 10 million in 2021, a record (the figure was 9,9 million as of November).

However, for the analyst of Bloomberg, Karl W. Smith, “Ports are under pressure not because the supply chain is breaking under the weight of the pandemic. They are under pressure because the volume has increased in response to demand.”

It argues in this regard that personal consumption expenditures on goods, a broad measure of US consumer spending, have risen 25% since the pandemic began and while imports from China have remained stable or decreased slightly, imports Vietnam, for example, have grown by more than 50%.

He emphasizes that the problem is with the US national distribution network, which has been unable to keep up, due in part to labor shortages. “Employment in the road transport sector plummeted in the (northern) spring of 2020 and slowly recovered, reaching its pre-pandemic levels in November,” he says.

From that point of view, the question would be that Americans buy, foreign markets supply, and the US distribution network simply can't keep up.