Pics: BBC
Most of you are aware goods that (any) company sells in the UK mostly come from overseas – the Far East usually. There’re a small minority who manage to manufacture on home soil, or at least closer to Blighty shores. For the rest of us, however, we’re reliant on what gets shipped China and SE Asia – even if our product designs are in house.
The keen eyed out there will have seen a smattering of info about goods and products coming into the UK and how difficult it is of late via news streams. A variety of reasons are responsible for this, which we won’t get bogged down with here.
We want to be as transparent as possible with regards to our customers which is why we’re publishing this. Currently, we have a pretty good stock of wetsuit and accessories at NCW but it’s not extensive. We have a shipment due to land on February 10th that means we will have restock on most winter lines that were sold out which is great news. Our next shipment for summer, with warmer water stock, is already being manufactured and booked to be shipped at the end of March. I think we are doing better than most as we have dealt with the same makers for many, many years and they are looking after us. Some of the brands we know and love are looking at the first shipment of the year not landing until May which is such a shame. What we won’t be doing is taking deposits on stock that we don’t have. In some cases, because of shortages of stock, we will take pre-orders from customers but only when the stock has actually landed at UK port.
What we do want to communicate are comments from our shipping agent. The reasoning for this is so you’re armed with the necessary information and knowledge.
‘The situation for shipping from Far East / Asia to UK is now being replicated in many regions globally. Ports have continued to struggle with depleted workforces due to Covid and Covid restrictions shortening working hours to two thirds of usual output in most cases. This is combined with an unusually high volume of freight all year since the initial recovery after Chinese new year and Covid shut down in China, plus the Christmas peak season and Push to get goods manufactured and shipped in the run up to Chinese New Year. In short there has never been a more perfect storm in order to generate enormous problems for the container shipping industry globally with big knock on impacts for rail, road and air from all regions to the UK.
The port issues have been exaggerated by liners continually ignoring warnings from ports about the overstock of containers at specific locations and still sending over the remaining quota of containers to those ports. This has led to massive imbalance in stock of containers globally with ports full of containers in the West and other import heavy areas, and a lack of containers in the manufacturing hubs such as China and SE Asia.
1) Container prices have exceeded US$ 10,000.00/40’ container from many China ports over the past couple of weeks and the signs are that the shipping lines will continue to increase by at least US$ 1000/40’ for the foreseeable future.
2) Four of the largest shipping lines in the world have either stopped running services from China to the UK or only call at China and UK using smaller feeder vessels for the foreseeable future. The demand for space already exceeded the supply before they took this step.
3) The space booked from China to UK this week was 220% of the space available meaning that 100% will roll to next week and the bookings expected next week are already at least 220% of space available again so will increase week on week and will be 340% of space available next week alone.
4) Some ports in SE Asia do not have any space available for shipping to UK until at least the end of February now.
5) Shipping lines are actively rolling or cancelling bookings and then advising that clients have to pay the price for the date that the container actually sails. They will not honour any rate agreed at time of booking.
6) Shipping lines have ripped up contracts for clients moving high volume cargo with the exception of the odd shipping line for the odd global extreme high volume account (+2000 containers per month clients, this is per importer not forwarder total volume).
7) Shipping lines have started removing credit from all shippers and agents in China as they can not fund the growth in freight rates that they themselves have created nor take the credit risk created due to their own funders risk appetite.
8) As of this week we are having to pay deposits of at least US$ 3500/20’ and US$ 7000/40’ to secure space for your bookings. We pay this directly to the liners in China and they won’t release space until they receive payment. We then have to pay the balance at time of shipping.
9) We and our governing body UK BIFA and also global body IATA have asked for government intervention. UK Government stance is that we are fortunate to live in a free market economy and the shipping lines are selling a product at a price based on supply and demand which is something that they can’t legally interfere with.’
We appreciate your patience on this. Any questions just shout.