Richard Gottlieb – Global Toy News
Port of Yantian Is Back to Business
The Port of Yantian, vital to the toy industry and others who manufacture in southern China, is back in business. The port, hard-hit by coronavirus, had been operating at 30% capacity for several weeks.
Sam Chambers, writing for Splash247.com, in his article, “Yantian to return to full operations from midnight, box backlog expected to take many weeks to clear,” quotes Lars Jensen, a container consultant, as stating:
It will take Yantian more than two months to clear the more than 700,000 teu* queuing outside its quays along with all the cargo that is scheduled to call at the key export gateway in the coming week
*I checked. “T.E.U.” stands for twenty-foot equivalent unit or, in other words, a 20-foot container.
The article also quotes Judah Levine, research lead at container platform Freightos as describing the ongoing challenges in this way:
“Port officials point to late and unpredictable arrival times as the culprit for the congestion, providing another sign of how interconnected ocean freight is: delays elsewhere from other causes…throw off operations at other ports leading to further delays and disruptions as they have done for the past year.”
Container Ship Charter Costs Over $100,000 Per Day
There has been a great deal of talk about the cost of containers, but what about the cost of leasing a ship to carry the containers. Greg Miller of Freightwaves says it all in his headline, “More container ships score ‘astronomical’ $100,000/day rates.”
Mr. Miller quotes Constantin Baack, CEO of MPC Container Ships:
“What we’ve seen is that over the last five weeks alone, it has really skyrocketed…and there’s no end in sight.
“There are almost no ships available.”
FedEx Is Dropping Customers
The Wall Street Journal leads with this sub-headline in an article about FedEx’s challenging in meeting the demand for its services: “Carrier dropped freight customers to ease congestion in burdened network; some service has been restored.”
The article by Thomas Gryta reports that “FedEx has lagged behind rivals in keeping deliveries on-time this year. The company is blaming a tight labor market for its troubles. Fourteen hundred companies were effected:
Earlier this month, FedEx suspended about 1,400 customers of its Freight shipping service, a move that surprised customers and was aimed at easing a congested network taxed by relentless package volume…In December, United Parcel Service Inc. imposed shipping restrictions on some large retailers such as Gap Inc. and Nike Inc. because of the busy holiday shopping period.
