American ports are crowded with goods and containers... What are the reasons?

The New York Times published a report on the problem of overcrowding in American ports, focusing on the port of Savannah;

The third largest container port in the United States.

The report saw that there are several factors behind this problem;

Including mainly the closure due to the outbreak of the Corona epidemic, and the interconnection of global trade movement with each other, at a time when the problem has become global and a new reality that may require a fundamental adjustment in the shipping infrastructure worldwide, as the report sees.

The report describes the situation in Savannah Port as “like toy bricks thrown from the sky, and nearly 80,000 shipping containers in various shapes are stacked in the port, 50 percent more than usual. Steel crates are waiting for ships to carry them to their final destination, or That the trucks divert them to the warehouses, which are also crowded to the ceiling, and there are about 700 containers left by their owners in the port on the banks of the Savannah River for a month or more.”

"They didn't come to pick up their cargo, never before has this whole yard been so crowded," the report quoted Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, as saying.

"It's gotten to the point where the major supply chains are in turmoil, with places to put things packed into one of the largest US ports. With major ports dealing with bewildering piles of merchandise, what seemed like a temporary phenomenon (traffic congestion quickly) What is dissipated) is increasingly seen as a new reality that may require a fundamental overhaul of the charging infrastructure globally.”

There are no indications of a decline in the turmoil in the shipping industry and the broader crisis in the supplying companies, and according to the report, it “represents a source of inconvenience and anxiety in all aspects of the global economy, challenging the assumptions that it was hoped that it would return active and strong to growth while limiting the spread of the Corona epidemic through vaccines.” .

This disruption helps explain why Germany's industrial fortunes have fallen, why inflation has become a cause for concern among central bankers, and why American industrialists now wait an average of 92 days to assemble the parts and raw materials they need to manufacture their goods.

Nearly 13% of the world's cargo capacity is disrupted due to delays (Getty Images)

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These disruptions appear to be a series of intertwined shortages of products, given that there is a shortage of shipping containers in China, at a time when factories in the rest of the world - which depend on Chinese-made parts and chemicals - have had to limit production.

The New York Times describes the situation in the port of Savannah, where it attests to a more complex series of intertwined problems, and it is not just a dearth of goods, but also a reflection of the shortage of truck drivers transporting goods to their next destinations.

The newspaper adds that Savannah port officials cannot control the crazy chaos prevailing in highways, warehouses, ports across the ocean and in industrial cities around the world, and quotes Lynch as saying, "Suppliers are overwhelmed and unsustainable at this point, and everything is out of control."

The newspaper notes - in this regard - that last month the port yard contained 4,500 containers that were stuck in the docks for at least 3 weeks, and Lynch described this situation as "ridiculous."

changes

Early this year - as the newspaper says - with high freight rates and a scarcity of containers, the problem was widely seen as a temporary result of the closure due to the epidemic, but after half a year, congestion returned to worse, and nearly 13% of capacity was disrupted. Shipment of goods worldwide due to delays.

According to the newspaper, many companies now assume that the epidemic has fundamentally changed business life.

Those who may not have shopped for groceries and bought clothes online, especially the elderly, have tasted relief and been forced to adapt to a deadly virus, and many are likely to retain the habit and continue to put pressure on suppliers.

The newspaper talked about how shortages and delays in the arrival of goods became a source of concern about fair competition, and wondered whether the goods would reach stores in time with the approach of Christmas.