World Events Recent Effect on Shipping

March 16, 2022

As you might imagine there is little change in Ukraine in terms of relocation services availability. We do understand there is a need to get goods out of the country for expats that have goods there, however, realistically this will not be happening in the short-term.

This crisis will continue to have an impact on global shipping for some time to come.

Starting last week, COVID lockdowns has impacted household goods service in Hong Kong and this week delays in China have been seen. Especially hard hit is Shenzhen, which has a population of 17.5 million and is the world’s third largest port. This is the worst outbreak since the pandemic and it concerning as the lockdowns there in early 2020 was the catalyst for turmoil in international shipping that we are still living with today.

We are still seeing shipping delays globally and especially seeing more challenges out of Argentina and Brazil. The delays in the US continue to be due to congestion due to volume and labor shortages.

There is a container ship stuck just outside of Chesapeake Bay and we do not have any containers on board or planned to sail on this ship in the short-term.

Diesel fuel has hit a record high this week, which we are starting to feel and see impacting pricing across the board. We are watching this space closely. As the time of this writing, oil prices just started to come down.

Overall, we are not having many challenges getting last minute moves covered and expect that to last for the next couple of weeks. We fully anticipate another big peak season, so please do get those orders over and encourage your transferees to get those dates set sooner than later.