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The maritime industry usually works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year; Covid 19 exposed the maritime industry. Due to the virus situation, many shipments and shipments had to be stopped due to many reasons such as country restrictions and fear of the virus in general.
The supply chain industry was heavily impacted resulting in excessive prices for fleets due to a lack of operational vessels. After countless efforts by governments with isolation and mass vaccination policies; The world situation began to normalize little by little. Therefore; the maritime supply chain industry began to improve its situation in recent months.
We are January 2022, starting a new year, however the virus does not seem to want to go anywhere. The Omicron variant has hit the entire world with several cases of infection after the Christmas and New Year holidays. Unfortunately, the wave of infections has caused many authorities and world leaders to take isolation and prevention measures again to try to stop the spread of the virus.
Covid19 impact
Worldwide the virus has caused several impacts to the supply chain again. Which leaves exposed some points that the industry must improve to avoid events such as those that have occurred in recent weeks. The only way to overcome this type of situations is to be smart and find an efficient and effective solution.
China has 5 of the 10 busiest ports in the world. The Asian giant has adopted local isolation measures to combat the virus and the new Omicron variant. These measures have a direct impact on the supply chain as an industry. Ningbo, one of the largest container port in the world, is in everyone’s sights as the city of Ningbo has decided to take isolation measures which can have a negative impact on the volume of cargo handled in that port. This can be seriously affected by the measures the Chinese government has taken.
Stopping the flow of people at such an important port can deal heavy blows for supply chain companies. For example, freight-forwarders and container yards can clearly see their operations affected by the fact that the port is not operating at its full capacity.
This closure could even affect other sectors of the economy, not only in the supply chain but also in the manufacturing industry. The covid has also caused China to close its borders with Vietnam which has caused a lot of freight cargos to be stuck at the border.
However, last week had been a good start to the year and very promising. Ningbo saw an 8.5% increase in container flow compared to the previous year.
These strict restrictions in China due to the covid and the omicron variant have directly affected the pilots of the vessels which has caused great delays and congestion in marine traffic. Vessels have even been seen anchoring dangerously close to each other in anchorage restriction zones, which can potentially be very dangerous for the crew onboard mainly. This has caused the Olive Bay ship to have entangled its anchor chain with another ship between January 8 and 9, 2022 in the Shanghai area.
The ports in China move a significant number of containers in the world, which the closure of their ports directly affects many companies and industries that work in the sector. Not only Chinese companies are affected by these measures, but also global companies that belong to the supply chain.
Covid 19 has truly been a fundamental element in recent years which has caused many changes due to the strong impacts caused by the virus. The only way to cope with this adversity is to improve and look for alternatives to work more efficiently in our new environment.
