Over the last two years we have witnessed unprecedented disruption across the supply chain. Whether caused by factories being paralyzed due to lockdowns, the quarantine of seafarers arriving to shore, or the exponential growth of E-commerce, the pandemic has certainly put strong pressure on the maritime & logistics sector worldwide.
Although the industry hoped that the container flow would normalize in 2022 thanks to vaccine rollouts, countries reopening their borders and resuming economic activities, the appearance of the Omicron variant (and any potential new variant that might arise in the coming months) has shaken that perspective away for the short-term. While apparently less harmful than its Delta counterpart, Omicron’s rapid transmissibility has led to new lockdowns across the world, especially in China, the world’s leading manufacturer, which diminishes the reliability of an already weakened logistics sector.
This uncertainty makes it difficult for shippers to plan far in advance. Hence, experts are recommending the shift from a Just-In-Time (JIT) arrival business model to Just-In-Case, meaning that warehousing infrastructure is becoming even more important in the logistics game. Additionally, terminals must implement protocols to prevent the quarantine of seafarers arriving to ports as well as potential shortages of staff – this is something that we are already seeing in certain countries with regards to truck divers coming in and out of the terminal.
Whilst one would hope that we would start to see the light at end of the tunnel in 2022, – and the landscape does look more promising than at this time last year – there is still a lot of work to be done before the industry can see the back of the effects arising from the pandemic…
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