The head of the freight department of DHL, one of the world's largest transport companies, said congestion at ports should ease next year, the main reason behind which is that new container ships will be delivered and demand will fall back from the peak of the epidemic, but it is still not enough to restore the global supply chain to pre-COVID-19 levels, Zhitong Financial APP has learned.
"although the situation in the supply chain is expected to ease in 2023, the capacity level will not return to 2019," Tim Scharwath, chief executive of DHL's freight division, said in an interview on Wednesday. "I don't think our freight industry will return to overcapacity. This is mainly because infrastructure, especially in the United States, will not be upgraded overnight, and infrastructure construction usually takes a long time. "
Last year, the COVID-19 epidemic and related restrictions led to a shortage of workers and truck drivers at several of the world's major ports, slowing the flow of goods into and out of freight centres and pushing container shipping rates to record highs. It is understood that in September last year, the freight price of goods from China to Los Angeles increased more than eightfold from the end of 2019 to US $12424.
The current sea freight rates are still higher than those before COVID-19 's epidemic.
At present, while the situation has eased in most places with the return of workers, the supply chain is likely to face further pressure as some key ports end the blockade and the backlog of goods is cleared.
Us ports will see a surge in imports in the coming months and are expected to approach the all-time high of 2.34 million 20-foot containers set in March, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said on Wednesday.
NRF said the throughput of major US container ports will be close to an all-time high.
Scharwath warned that congestion at major European ports such as Hamburg and Rotterdam was worsening as goods from Asia grew, while strikes by South Korean truck drivers would put pressure on the supply chain. "wherever you apply pressure in the world, it has an impact on the rest of the supply chain," he said. " "five years ago, the situation in South Korea would not have affected the supply chain as a whole, but now it will."
Container shipping companies have been ordering new ships during the outbreak, and congestion at ports has pushed freight rates to record highs, helping them make record profits after years of performance losses.
Global orders for container ships accounted for 9.8 per cent of the world's existing ship capacity by the end of 2021, about 6.5 percentage points higher than a year ago, according to Bloomberg.
Edit / somer