Following our July shipping update, here’s the latest news and forecast to keep you in the loop about global supply chains.
International supply challenges continue
As we move further through the summer months, China continues to struggle with extreme weather. These conditions are currently impacting vast areas of the country, from huge floods in the south to extreme heat in the northern provinces, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. A knock on effect is being seen across some of China’s infrastructure, creating ongoing issues for factories. With typhoon and hurricane season almost upon the country, we are hoping that further challenges don’t materialise. Sadly China is also seeing more outbreaks of the new Covid-19 Delta variant, again impacting stock production and supply chains.
As you know we have explored alternative transport routes for supply this year. Due to essential maintenance on train lines, rail is now seeing significant delays with over 3000 containers caught just outside of Europe. To counter this frustrating situation we’ve placed additional stock on ships to hopefully counter any direct impact to our supplies. However, we have learnt that towards the end of August staff at Felixstowe, the UK’s largest container port, are due to be on strike. This is likely to affect logistics both there and at other ports in the UK and may result in further congestion – although this will hopefully be fairly short-lived.
Despite this somewhat bleak situation, our team is continuing to work hard to maintain good stocks using as many alternative supply chains as we can. Some of our product ranges are in good supply, and so please do get in touch to discuss options so that we can continue to support you over the weeks and months ahead.