covid and global supply chains, will anything change?

[bimble]

look at the state of this graph, cost of moving a shipping container from China!





It's basically covid, various effects of. With an extra bit just recently due to an outbreak at one important Chinese port which they shut down to contain the spread.

These containers full of stuff from China are sort of the basic building blocks of life as we know it but when the cost of shipping goes up 5 times it must means that some stuff, cheaper and bulkier stuff, can't be worth shipping anymore.
Just wondering will this change anything or will everyone just wait longer & pay more for things until we all forget about the mad fragility of it all and carry on regardless.

 

[SpineyNorman]

That's already a bit out of date and it's only got worse, it's more like $15k from Shenzhen (Yantian the biggest) and the rest are following. (before Covid I used to cost for $2.5k per container and it was about right)

It's been a perfect storm of covid and fuck ups. First there was Chinese New Year, when it all shuts down for two weeks and you have to get stuff shipped early, it got up to about $12k for a 40ft HC container. Loads of people (me included) thought we were being clever by holding off shipping until after CNY. But too many of us had done that so there was another bottleneck after CNY and they didn't start dropping for over a month.

Then there was the Ever Given grounding on the Suez that really fucked things up. Put it back up to $12k+. We hadn't really recovered from that when they started to get outbreaks at Chinese ports. Yantian is down to 30 percent capacity at the moment and they're redirecting containers to alternative ports so the pressure is being felt everywhere.

The really serious people in freight are saying it won't return to anything like normal until after next CNY (so next March at the earliest).

What this actually means in terms of goods on the shelves is that anything that's both inexpensive and bulky either won't get shipped or will see big price increases (we've not had to do any price adjustments on high value products but on lower value bulky stuff we've had to increase by 50 percent plus.

Desk and pedestal fans will be really fucking expensive later in the summer if not already.

I've got an email from my forwarder with some interesting quotes from industry magazines, I'm on holiday at the moment so not touching works email but if anyone's interested I can post them when I get home.

 

[StoneRoad]

For me, the brexshite is more relevant.
I have an amount of specialised fabric on back order (quite a bit, and it ain't cheap).

The agent with our order is in Yorkshire ... OK so far.
So this is what is happening ...
The fabric is made and printed in France. It is shipped to Spain for treatment.
Then it comes into the UK and travels to Yorkshire before we get it.

Prior to brexshite, that all worked without trouble.
It took something less than two weeks between ordering and deivery to us.

The current order is a replacement for one that was made up wrongly (same total area, but supplied in three peices, just not able to get all the lengths out of it that had been planned).
We've actually made a larger order overall, and included pre-buying for another project.
This has been going on now for, literally, months.
"It'll be with you in four weeks" that was back in March !
And I got the same "4 weeks" when checking yesterday.

 

[SpineyNorman]

For me, the brexshite is more relevant.
I have an amount of specialised fabric on back order (quite a bit, and it ain't cheap).

The agent with our order is in Yorkshire ... OK so far.
So this is what is happening ...
The fabric is made and printed in France. It is shipped to Spain for treatment.
Then it comes into the UK and travels to Yorkshire before we get it.

Prior to brexshite, that all worked without trouble.
It took something less than two weeks between ordering and deivery to us.

The current order is a replacement for one that was made up wrongly (same total area, but supplied in three peices, just not able to get all the lengths out of it that had been planned).
We've actually made a larger order overall, and included pre-buying for another project.
This has been going on now for, literally, months.
"It'll be with you in four weeks" that was back in March !
And I got the same "4 weeks" when checking yesterday.

European freight is a bit of a mess with Brexit but if you've got a relationship with a half decent forwarder we're talking delays of up to a week. That pales into complete and utter insignificance when it's taking a month just to get a booking, then shipping is taking 8 weeks instead of 4 and it's costing you 6 times the usual rate. Global freight as a whole is broken. You can't pin that on Brexit no matter how big an axe you have to grind.

 

[StoneRoad]

Yeah, I know about the global stuff. It affects me as well.

I work with a lot of tropical species as well as more home grown and European timber.

The bits of trees I need are getting way more difficult, expensive and time-consuming to obtain - even using a good, family-run local supplier. It used to be ring up to enquire, confirm by email and the following week we could collect our "sticks" if they didn't deliver ...
Now, we can be waiting weeks for the larger / longer sections we need.
34ft long planks anyone ?
I spent quite some time a few days ago trying to source some gaboon-faced plywood (it varnishes well for internal panelling) - I went round and round in circles on t'internet, phone and email. I've left the problem with our pet supplier for now, but may have to accept an alternative.

 

[SpineyNorman]

From what I've heard lumber is generally hard to source right now and prices through the roof so that makes a lot of sense. Fortunately you don't need wood to grow weed so I don't have to worry about that