New COVID cases are continuing to wreak havoc in world supply chains. The spread of the COVID Omicron variant has created bottlenecks throughout the world and in particular at many of the world's busiest ports in China. Operations at the world's busiest port of Shanghai are struggling to cope with shipments that have been re-routed from other large Chinese ports such as Shenzhen in the south and Tianjin in the north.
A Covid-19 outbreak in Shenzhen has resulted in a backlog of ships, restrictions on new ships entering the port and staffing shortages due to more workers getting tested and treated. In Tianjin, import and export operations have also slowed due to clusters of COVID outbreaks. Truck deliveries in Tianjin are also restricted and some factories are even rejecting trucks from Tianjin.
Beyond China, other major factory centers from South Korea to India are experiencing Omicron outbreaks and the prospect of major production disruptions.
Meanwhile in the United States, the country's largest ports in Southern California continue to experience major congestion. In addition to port backlogs and bottlenecks, the shortage of truck drivers remains and trucking regulations also continue to cause supply chain problems.
Ultimately, with disruptions both overseas and home at the ports, in the factories, and throughout the trucking industry while the Omicron variant rages across the globe, the supply chain problems not only have not been resolved but appear to be with us a while longer.
It is now more important than ever for all shippers to have supply chain visibility into their shipments. Whether your shipment is on a ship, truck or plane, DeltaTrak offers real-time data loggers and cloud services to put you in the best position to gain visibility into the condition and location of your shipment.
For ocean shipments, DeltaTrak recently announced the new FlashTrak Maritime Service. This new service provides FlashTrak subscribers with end-to-end location and ETA data during ocean transport. FlashTrak Maritime Service integrates into the FlashTrak cloud-based service to provide container location and ETA--even while your shipment is in the middle of the ocean.