To say that it is a challenging time for global logistics would be understating the situation. Over the past few weeks, several unrelated major events have been conspiring to introduce new delays to ocean shipments.
Over the last 30 days, global shipping has had to cope with the following major disruptions:
1. COVID-19 outbreaks at Yantian port
June 30. "Up to 5% of global freight capacity is being held up in China following a recent COVID-19 outbreak at the country's largest container terminal"
This particular outbreak has directly affected our consolidated freight shipments that were stuffed in containers and ready to leave port.
2. Wildfires across the Canadian west coast delaying rail between Vancouver and Toronto
July 6. "All intermodal and carload rail traffic northbound and eastbound from Vancouver, as well as rail traffic inbound to Vancouver from east/north of Kamloops continues to be affected by this situation."
While rail traffic may not seem pertinent to ocean shipments, all containers unloaded at the Vancouver port rely on the rail system to swiftly move goods to their next destination. Thus, when rail traffic slows or completely stops because of wildfires, sea ports soon reach their capacity and have to turn away inbound containerships (i.e. they must return to port).
3. Typhoon hitting the coast of China.
July 26. "Typhoon In-Fa made landfall over the weekend in eastern China, with heavy rain, flooding and strong winds impacting freight exports in several major ports and airports.
At the ports of Shanghai and Ningbo, container freight terminals have been shut down, vessel movements are delayed and warehouses are not receiving or delivering goods, SEKO said."
Moreover, over the last 12 months, sea shipping rates have more than doubled because of surging demand and limited capacity, and effective August 2021, sea shipping rates will be increasing a further 30%.
Please keep in mind that while sea freight may be slow and experiencing additional slow-downs that will likely impact delivery times for the foreseeable several months, it is still the safest shipping route for your doll.
Here is a recap of the advantages of consolidated freight / sea shipping, which must be weighed against now extremely slow delivery times:
- Good are palletized and shrink-wrapped at a consolidation warehouse, in China, and travel together with roughly 10 other dolls on a single pallet and are never individually handled until they arrive at our warehouse - this is the greatest benefit and greatly reduces shipping damage (which is so important on expensive dolls)
- As goods are transported under our company's import bond, customs has full visibility over the commercial importer (i.e. our company), our flawless import record (no violations or warnings), and only inspects goods when needed - this means that the risk of damage due to a customs inspection is incredibly small
- Good are 100% insured by our marine cargo insurance against almost all perils, including shipping damage and loss, from dock to dock over the entire journey, which is NOT the case for air freight where shipping insurance is optional and virtually never purchased by the doll manufacturers because of the prohibitively high cost
Have questions? We are here to help. E-mail or call us with any questions and one of our customer service team members would be glad to speak to you.
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