b'14American Journal ofTransportation ajot.com(WINGScontinued from page 8) their gifts out before the holidays - the December8th,2021,afully-loadedsunkcostofinternationalshipping EverGiventransitedtheCanaltoandimportingwasalreadyhigher deliver Christmas cargo to Europe. than any inflated trucking rates.There was also an ancillary effect, CoVid: T heg LiTChT haTR uined still being felt, that was brought on by C hRiSTMaS the uncertainties of consumer demand. COVID was in 2021, and poten- In an article in the Council on For-tially still is in 2022, a much biggereignRelations,entitledWhatHap-disruptorofthesupplychain.AndpenedtoSupplyChainsin2021?, unliketheEverGivenincident,theAnshuSiripurapu,wrote:Despite pandemiccanhitanylinkoreventheirefficiency,supplychainshave multiple segments in the supply chainlongprovendifficulttomanage. from manufacturer to consumer withBecauseeachpointinthechain ever widening impacts. Further, onlyreceives limited information about a asmallincidentcanexpandexpo- product,smallchangesinperceived nentiallythroughtheentiresupplyChineseportdelayswasshortagesstill did not increase enough to satisfyconsumerdemandatoneendcan chain.TaketheMeishanTerminalcompounded by the urgency of con- demandandmaintainpre-pandemiccause big changes in production at the event in late last summer. The PRCsumers to buy and retailers to restockinventory-to-salesratios.Retailersothera phenomenon known as the (Peoples Republic of China), enforc- before the holidays.warned shoppers to buy their holidaybullwhip effect.ingthezero-COVIDstrategy,shutUberFreightintheirMarketgifts earlier than usual and spendingAsSiripurapuexplained,aretail downtheMeishanTerminalattheInsights Report for 2022, remarked:surged at a faster rate than invento- store,seeingaspikeinweeklypur-portofNingbo-Zhoushanin AugustIn December, manufacturing expandedries, forcing retailers to pay more justchases of a particular item, ups its order 2021afteroneportworkertestedfor the 19 thmonth in a row since thetofilltheirshelves.Manyimportedfrom a wholesaler, which in turn orders positive.Theterminalremainedbeginningofthepandemic.Despitegoods were stuck at ports, further rais- evenmorefromthemanufacturer closed for nearly two weeks in con- thesesignsofgrowth,inventoriesing retailers willingness to pay to get(WINGScontinued on page 33)trast to the six days the Ever Given obstructed the Suez Canal. The Port Ningbo-Zhoushan throughput in 2020 wasnearly29millionTEUs,rank-ing number three in the world behind Shanghai and Singapore. (SeeAJOT Issue 727, page 26, AJOTs 5 Million TEU Club chart). By itself, the Meishan Terminals annual throughput is just over 7 mil-lionTEUs,orbywayofcompari- GUANGZHOU PORT GROUPson,roughlythesameastheentire throughput of the Port of New York/New Jersey (at 7.59 million TEUs).THE FASTEST GROWING PORT IN SOUTH CHINA For that reason, its not surprising that(FY 2021 Volumes)with the closure of a mega-terminal like Meishan that containerships wereNansha = 17.62 M TeuspiledupatotherChineseportsandHong Kong = 14.51M Teusthattheentiresupplychainslowed toacrawl,resultingininnumerableYantian = 14.16 M Teusdelaysforconsumermerchandise scheduled for holiday delivery.PORT OF NANSHA (GUANGZHOU PORT GROUP)ArecentblogpostedbyRotter-dam-basedShypple,acompanythatNew On Dock Rail (connecting the Hinterlands+Europe)operates an online shipping platform,New Cold and Dry Warehousing Facilities with Air-Sea+Rail enabling illustratesthewideningimpactofa Meishan-like shutdown on deliveries:Ecommerce ShippersAfter the major lockdown in NingboNew Terminal (4th) Fully Automated[Ningbo-Zhoushan] in August, experts estimated that it would take up to 60Open 24/7/365daysfornormalportoperationsto16+ Berths, 65+crane and Deep Waterresume.itiscurrentlyrecommended that retailers plan at least 70 days fur-ther in advance [Editors Italics], com-pared to normal shipping schedules. Shypple also added, the average delay per container used to be roughly half a day in January 2019. By the end of 2021, it was more than a week. LarsJensen,awell-knowncon-tainership trade analyst at Copenhagen-based Vespucci Maritime Consulting, noted that during 2021, Trans-Pacific ocean carrier transit times went from 45 days to 110 days. The result was that at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach there have been over 100 ves-sels waiting to unload at container ter-minals and even now there have been only slight decreases. [See Stas Mar-garonis, AJOT homepage Insight of February 9] *Balance your Supply Chain by having multiple Origin and Destination Gateways=Port DiversificationAnd while the launching of vac-cineshasbeguntostemthetideof COVID-19, as shipbrokers SSY (Simp-son Spence & Young) wrote in theirS.CHINA PORT WITH N.AMERICA AND 2022 Outlook, the Omicron variantEU/UK REPRESENTATIONof Covid-19 emerged towards the end of 2021, (is) proving a challenge for governmentstocontrol.ThismayFOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT US AT create a lag leading from end of year into 1H22 [1 sthalf of 2022] for logis- PORTOFNANSHA.COMtics and international tradeThedownstreamimpactofthe'