We hear daily about supply chain disruptions. Once again, the Port of Shanghai is shut down for Covid creating shipping disruption that looks more like an offshore blockade of the China coastline and will take months to unravel. This comes on top of the Ukraine war disruption and fundamental restructuring of supply chains to support new business models including the direct-to-customer movement.
Although the recent disruptions highlight the fragility of global supply chains, the disruption is fundamentally driven by higher volumes transported by larger ships using paper-driven workflow that has been years in the making.
One of the bottlenecks frequently highlighted is the congestion at America’s ports. While none of America’s ports are in the top 10 busiest globally, America’s aging infrastructure is especially apparent at U.S. coastal ports and waterways where steady growth in shipping and ever larger container ships have placed significant stress on the ability of our ports to handle the loads. This is causing significant backups that result in major global supply chain disruption as ships anchor offshore and containers sit in yards awaiting transport to final destinations. It’s a never-ending battle that goes well beyond the Covid issues that are frequently blamed.
To alleviate port congestion, the busiest ports are finding creative ways to stage containers closer to the customer by creating pop-up ports that make use of unused rail yards and other underutilized real estate close to main transportation arteries.