Biggest U.S. Retailers Charter Private Cargo Ships to Sail Around Port Delays
Source: WSJ
Global supply-chain delays are so severe that some of the biggest U.S. retailers have resorted to an extreme—and expensive—tactic to try to stock shelves this holiday season: They are chartering their own cargo ships to import goods. Port delays, Covid-19 outbreaks and worker shortages have snarled the flow of products between Asia and North America, threatening the supplies of everything from holiday decorations and toys to appliances and furniture. It is taking roughly 80 days to transport goods across the Pacific, or twice as long as before the pandemic, retail and shipping executives said.
Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Target Corp. —some of the biggest U.S. retailers by revenue—are among the companies that are paying for their own chartered ships as part of wider plans to mitigate the disruptions, a costly and unattainable option for most companies. Some of the chains are passing along these added costs by raising prices for shoppers.
The chartered ships are smaller than those that companies like Maersk operate and move just a small slice of total imports, the executives said. Ships that can hold around 1,000 containers are on average nearly twice as expensive as the cost of moving cargo on a typical 20,000-container vessel, according to freight forwarders.
But the charters provide the big retailers with a way to work around bottlenecks at ports such as Los Angeles, by rerouting cargo to less congested docks such as Portland, Ore., Oakland, Calif., or the East Coast. It also could help retailers ensure that key products such as electronics and décor arrive for the holiday season... Meanwhile, delays at major U.S. ports continue to escalate. More than 60 boxships were waiting to pull into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach recently, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, up from around 25 a month earlier. Backups are spreading to East Coast ports as well.
Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/biggest-u-s-retailers-charter-private-cargo-ships-to-sail-around-port-delays-11633858380
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