In recent month, all the companies specializing in the international business are deeply troubled by the shipments, caused by the lockdown in Shanghai and also the Russia/Ukraine War.
1. Shanghai Pudong’s lockdown
In order to solve the Covid faster and more efficiently, Shanghai started the extensive citywide lockdown earlier this week. It is conducted in two phases. Shanghai’s Pudong financial district and nearby areas has been locked down from Monday to Friday, and then the vast downtown area of Puxi will start its own five-day lockdown from April 1 to 5.
As we all know, Shanghai is the biggest hub for finance and international business in the country, with the world’s largest container-shipping port, and also PVG airport. In 2021, the container throughput of Shanghai Port reached 47.03 million TEUs, more than Singapore port’s 9.56 million TEUs.
In this case, the lockdown inevitably leads to big headache. During this lockdown, nearly all the shipments (Air and Sea) have to be postponed or cancelled, and even for the courier companies like DHL stop the daily deliveries. We hope it will recover to normal as soon as the lockdown is finished.
2. Russia/Ukraine War
The Russia-Ukraine war is severely disrupting the sea shipping and air freight, not only in Russia/Ukraine, but also all the areas over the world.
Many logistics companies have also suspended deliveries to and from Russia as well as Ukraine, while container shipping firms are shunning Russia. DHL said it has closed offices and operations in Ukraine until further notice, while UPS told that it has suspended services to and from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
Besides the big increase of oil/fuel costs caused by the War, the following sanctions has forced airlines to cancel a lot of lights and also reroute long flight distance, which make the air shipping cost crazily higher. It is said that the Freight cost Air Index’s China-to-Europe rates climbed more than 80% after imposing war risk surcharges. Moreover, the limited air capacity presents a double whammy for shippers by sea shipment, as it unavoidably exacerbates the pains of sea shipment, as it is already been in big troubles during the whole Pandemic period.
As the whole, the bad influence of international shipments will in turn adversely affect economies over the world, so we sincerely hope all the customers in international business can have better plan for ordering and logistics to ensure good business growth this year. Universe will try our best to support our customers with considerable service: https://www.universeoptical.com/3d-vr/