The intense shortage of sea containers – each dry and reefer – has disrupted the global food supply chain, leaving tonnes of onion-like perishables, meat merchandise, and millet unrecognized in India due to cargo delays.
Imbalance in containers
As a result, individuals in Thailand are unable to get maize and chilly in time from Chennai, Malaysians and Indonesians are suffering from a shortage of rose onions, and the Japanese are ready for shrimps from the region. There are only a few examples of how the disparity of containers has an effect on the food chain. The disparity started in the middle of the last year when various export containers from China were trapped in a number of ports in the US. In addition, major congestion has arisen in all major world ports, and container storage slots have become inaccessible. This caused ships to be anchored for a couple of days, resulting in shortages in the delivery of cargo.
“It took 18 days to transport the rose onions from Chennai to Thailand. However, as a result of container shortage, it is now up to 45 days,” said P Mathan of Agrogreen Assets India, an exporter of onion-like and chilly agro-merchandise. Tons of onions are packed for the cargo at Pink Hills in Chennai’s outskirts, but containers are waiting, he said. The disparity in container hurts exporters badly as they wanted to pay for freight to South East Asian (SEA) foreign locations, says Agri Commodities Exporters Affiliate President M Madan Prakash.
However, the lower import and diversion of bins to China has led to a severe shortage of containers in India and, since January, freight to SEA is in the order of $200 per TEU, said Prakash. The massive backlog in the transshipment ports has contributed to additional delays in the delivery of freight to the final vacation spot, he said.
Refer Variables
Seafood exporter Elias Sait reported that there is a substantial delay in the shipment of shrimps to Japan due to the shortage of reefer containers. And where containers can be identified, there is a lack of reefer factors in transshipment ports, he said.
Agility Growing Markets Logistics Index Survey 2021 showed that the peak season for regular sea freight mostly occurs in October. The shortage of containers in China was substantially acute at the beginning of 2021. The demand for Chinese language exports in the second half of 2020 was very strong.
No matter how strong China’s import demand is, there are few containers returning to China to be refilled and exported again.
Repercussions
The repercussions are being felt throughout Asia, with container shortages in Japan, South Korea, India, and South-East Asia anticipated to final not less than till mid-2021, with transport charges over the interval reflecting the supply-demand imbalance, the survey mentioned.
