There are many things that get bigger and container ships are no exception. Perhaps you remember the ship that got "stuck" in the Suez Canal (it was called Ever Given) due to its enormous size and that communication route was for many days cut off.
As the size of the ships increases, so does the number of containers they can transport. In some cases, it has gone from carrying 4,000 containers to carrying around 7,000 containers on a single ship. An increase of 70%, which then affects the loading and unloading in the ports.
As the ships are so large and loaded, in some cases as in the photo below, the ship sags due to the waves and the enormous weight that it carries. View photo.
There has been a huge change in this business. From being almost stopped by the pandemic a year and a half ago, to being saturated by the return to activity and the increase in online sales, and if before transporting a container could cost only $ 1,000, now it cost more than $ 15,000 in some cases, with the increased costs that this implies.
Everyone talks about the problem of the supply chain, and containers are only one of the variables, but not negligible.
With the ports saturated and with delays in unloading (in the port of Long Beach, USA, the delay of ships to unload has reached more than 70 ships) the pressures of loading and unloading very quickly are maximum and losses of containers occur.
For those who do not know, unloading a container can take between 30 and 50 seconds depending on the port in question, but since the ships carry thousands of containers, the work consumes many hours and the tension cannot be greater.
When you hear about the enormous problem of the Suppy Chain, you should know that the famous "chips" are not the only problem, and that the containers (they are boxes that carry products inside) also have their part of the problem.
And in the end all this problem costs a lot of money that is being added to the price of the products manufactured "far" and that we pay.
With other closer suppliers, the prices of the products could be somewhat more expensive to manufacture but the final price might not be so excessive.
Maybe we have to rethink the supply chains, because sometimes the cheap thing in a certain time ends up being very expensive, and in the process we have burdened our industry.
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