Supply crunch: Maersk diverts large cargo ships from UK as Felixstowe port fills up due to backlog of heavy truck containers

[ad_1]

Supermarkets are looking for alternative ways to bring food to Britain as ships are diverted from the UK’s main port due to congestion.

The British Retail Consortium said “further disruption” to supply chains could be “inevitable” after Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, said it was steering large ships away because major UK ports are shut down.

The congestion is due to heavy truck drivers not being available to transport unloaded containers to save space.

On a visit to the HGV training center near Oldham in Greater Manchester, Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said the shortage was “entirely expected”.

“We knew when we left the European Union that we were going to need a Plan B with regards to drivers, we knew that because of the pandemic there would be an impact, and here we are in the middle of a crisis and we have, what or what? A prime minister is missing in action.”

Maersk said it has begun rerouting larger ships away from the port of Felixstowe in Suffolk, which is the gateway for 36 percent of the country’s shipping containers. Instead, goods destined for the UK are carried on small ships, which delays the time it takes for things to arrive.

“We had to stop operations on a ship because there was nowhere to unload the containers,” Lars Mikael Hensen, head of the Global Ocean Network at Maersk, told the Financial Times on Monday.

“Felixstowe is among the two or three most affected plants [globally]. We have to deviate some of the larger ships from Felixstowe and move some of the smaller ships for freight.”

“We did it for a while over the summer, and now we’re starting to do it again,” he added.

The British Retail Consortium said on Tuesday that congestion at Felixstowe was another result of the ongoing shortage of HGV drivers. Andrew Opie, Director of Food and Sustainability, explained: “Because cargo cannot be moved fast enough, there is a backlog of containers in ports which prevents new ships from docking and unloading.”

The organization, which counts most retailers and supermarkets as members, said that “retailers are working closely with suppliers to alleviate problems, including finding alternative ways to bring goodness into the country, but that further disruption may be inevitable.”

They called on the government to extend the temporary visa regime to increase the number of heavy truck drivers available.

The UK’s trade authority for port operators also said on Tuesday that some ports were managing storage space with “short-term restrictions”.

Tim Morris, chief executive of the UK’s Major Ports Group, said: “As the UK’s gateways to 95 per cent of trade, ports are a jam in the sandwich between fast and volatile shipping and UK supply chains that are heavily influenced by factors such as HGV drive shortages.”

He said the ports are now operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have increased truck capacity in an effort to help ease the pressure.

He added: “Ports therefore have to manage access to storage space very dynamically in extreme cases. This could mean some very limited short-term restrictions.”

The trade magazine, The Grocer, reported that many shipping containers in Felixstowe now spend about 10 days in port before being collected, up from the usual average of four and a half days.

Tesco has already said it has increased its use of rail freight to try to reduce the impact of a lack of drivers on inventory.

CEO, Ken Murphy, said the supermarket has set a goal of delivering 90,000 good 40-foot containers annually via trains by the end of 2021, up from about 65,000 currently.

[ad_2]