Since late December last year, local cases of covid-19 pneumonia have occurred in important port cities in China, such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Ningbo and Dalian. Local governments immediately launched emergency measures to deal with the epidemic, effectively controlled the spread of the epidemic and timely guaranteed the health and safety of local personnel. However, when taking the necessary response steps, some measures will inevitably affect the daily production of enterprises and the normal operation of the supply chain, slowing down the transportation rhythm of container ships at the port terminals, insufficient manpower allocation and deteriorating the backlog of goods. This also reflects the reality of frequent problems in the transportation chain of the global container market in the shipping industry for a period of time, and it is even more difficult to reduce the congestion of the world’s major ports in the same period. In this context, the long-standing supply chain challenges such as soaring shipping costs, rising prices of raw materials and shortage of material supply may further exacerbate the already tense global supply chain problems.
The epidemic continues in major economies outside China, and the global supply chain will still have to face the problem of disorder. Liu Dawei, deputy general manager of China Beijing Changjiu Logistics Corp(603569) Corporation, believes that “the rise in shipping prices is a temporary phenomenon. With the gradual recovery of the supply chain, it will take about three years for prices to return to normal.”
As the financial policy stimulus and vaccination rate of European and American countries have reached the state of universal immunization of more than 70%, the economic recovery has accelerated, and the terminal demand is strong, even exceeding the pre epidemic level, which leads to the further aggravation of the load of the global supply chain.
However, all links of global goods production and supply are affected by a new round of mutated Omicron strain, and the supply chain has been hit again to a considerable extent. For example, in China, some factories of Volkswagen and Toyota in Tianjin were temporarily closed due to the epidemic.
The spread of Omicron virus in the United States is even more alarming. Recently, the average daily number of confirmed cases in the United States has exceeded 700000, and the cumulative number of confirmed cases has exceeded 60 million. Shipping companies have cancelled multiple flights, and the congestion in American ports has not improved. According to the latest data released by Drury, a global shipping consulting company, since mid January, the three major shipping alliances in the world have successively cancelled several voyages, among which the alliance cancelled 20.5 voyages the most; 2m alliance has reached 15 voyages; At least 8.5 voyages were cancelled by the ocean Union; A total of 44 voyages. Masson, a pan The Pacific Securities Co.Ltd(601099) container liner service company, recently announced that all Masson express flights scheduled to sail on January 19 and January 20 were cancelled. The next cycle of Mason express will be scheduled until January 26 and January 27.
As the global freight market demand and shipping space are still in a serious imbalance between supply and demand, the suspension of some shipping lines and flights will usher in another round of rise in market freight rates.
The sharp rise of world shipping prices not only leads to tight cargo transactions and rising prices, but also has a more serious impact on commodities with low prices and large volume, or they are simply squeezed out of international cargo ships with increasingly tight transport capacity. With the tightening of international shipping and soaring freight rates, Japan, Kenya and other places staged a “potato shortage”, but the United States had to deal with the imbalance of surplus potatoes. Japan’s McDonald’s said on January 7 that due to import delays, it would continue to stop selling medium and large fries for the next month and only sell small ones. This is the company’s second purchase restriction notice since the end of last year. The head of KFC in Kenya, Tennyson, explained that it was unable to provide French fries because the cargo ship transporting potatoes was delayed for more than a month due to the epidemic, resulting in the interruption of potato supply for making French fries.
Insiders predict that the export shipping schedule in January this year will face more severe challenges due to the Omicron epidemic, and the shipping space on the whole US line will continue to be tight; Market demand and shipping space are still in a serious imbalance between supply and demand, which is expected to further deteriorate due to the arrival of shipping peak on the eve of Chinese Spring Festival. This fragile supply-demand relationship of cross-border logistics will become more fragile in 2022. The global epidemic has not subsided for a day, and the repeated epidemic will aggravate the imbalance between logistics supply and demand caused by many of the above factors. The imbalance between supply and demand will inevitably lead to the rise of freight prices. At present, although the order volume of container ships has begun to increase again, the ships ordered now need two to three years to launch, so the era of high price shipping is likely to last longer.
The impact of rising or persistently high international freight prices on the inflation rate of various countries can not be ignored. The United Nations report points out that between now and 2023, high sea freight prices are expected to increase global import prices by up to 11% and consumer prices by an average of 1.5%. Xiao Yuanqi, vice chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, also warned recently that whether we think inflation is temporary or whether the inflation target can be higher, we must admit that the world has entered an era of high inflation.
