{"id":21203,"date":"2021-07-19T04:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.karatpackaging.com\/?p=21203"},"modified":"2021-07-19T04:45:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:45:00","slug":"rising-cost-of-ocean-freight-affect-karat-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/latest-news\/rising-cost-of-ocean-freight-affect-karat-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Cost of Ocean Freight Affect Karat Products"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Never has the global supply\u00a0chain experienced such\u00a0overwhelming demand nor\u00a0exponential cost increases\u00a0that it has this past\u00a0year \u2013 these past few months to be more precise.\u00a0Companies that source goods from Asia are in a bidding war<sup>1<\/sup>\u00a0for\u00a0containers,\u00a0which are in short\u00a0supply, causing prices to skyrocket.\u00a0In late March the ocean freight cost from Asia to California was $5,000 then\u00a0a month later it jumped to $7,000. Now,\u00a0in July,\u00a0that cost has more than\u00a0<em>doubled<\/em>\u00a0to $15,000.\u00a0Additionally, a container shipping from Asia to New Jersey\u00a0was $13,000 in late April and is\u00a0now up 54% to $20,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Out of desperation, shippers&nbsp;have been&nbsp;willing to pay&nbsp;to&nbsp;over&nbsp;250% more than they&nbsp;did last&nbsp;year&nbsp;just to meet demand.&nbsp;Those that have low-value goods face freight costs higher than they\u2019re worth and are forced to pass costs onto customers&nbsp;or&nbsp;to&nbsp;leave them out of stock.&nbsp;Karat\u00ae by&nbsp;Lollicup<sup>TM<\/sup>&nbsp;has regretfully issued several price increase announcements this&nbsp;year,&nbsp;with the latest one taking effect late July, in order to maintain inventory for its customers so that they can continue to run their businesses.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The biggest impact to costs and delays are at the ports. Southern California ports, the busiest ports in the nation,&nbsp;are backed up due to lack of manpower and limited capacity.&nbsp;Container volume at the port of Los Angeles grew over 80%<sup>2<\/sup>&nbsp;and pushed them beyond their limits. As a result&nbsp;of this bottleneck, cargo ships are left waiting&nbsp;in the harbor for days and sometimes weeks to&nbsp;unload.&nbsp;A&nbsp;record number of shipments&nbsp;were reported more than a week late&nbsp;because of this&nbsp;congestion.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other side of the globe, China\u2019s shipments created a backlog last month when the China shut&nbsp;down operations in Guangdong to mitigate a COVID outbreak<sup>3<\/sup>.&nbsp;Within Guangdong are the world\u2019s busiest container ports, including&nbsp;Yantian which processes 36,000 containers every&nbsp;day. Consequently, the shut down&nbsp;left thousands of containers sitting and waiting at the dock. Once operations resumed, there was still an issue of labor&nbsp;as the coronavirus spread among workers.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ripple effect of the pandemic across the&nbsp;global supply chain continues to compound and with the heavy holiday shopping season right around the corner, there seems to&nbsp;be no end in sight. Experts believe costs will continue to rise through early 2022. Karat by&nbsp;Lollicup&nbsp;may have no choice but to raise prices in the future, but customers will always be well informed of any changes&nbsp;as we value transparency.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For more information about latest news and trends, check out&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.karatpackaging.com\/latest-news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.karatpackaging.com\/latest-news\/<\/a>&nbsp;.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:70px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><strong>Resources<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><sup>1<\/sup>Page, Paul (2021, July&nbsp;5)&nbsp;Container Shipping Prices Skyrocket as Rush to Move Goods Picks Up.&nbsp;<em>The Wall Street Journal.&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/container-ship-prices-skyrocket-as-rush-to-move-goods-picks-up-11625482800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/container-ship-prices-skyrocket-as-rush-to-move-goods-picks-up-11625482800<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><sup>2<\/sup>Nakayama, Shuji &amp;&nbsp;Shiraiwa, Hiona (2021, April 4)&nbsp;Freight rates spike as Asian cargo ships jam US West Coast ports.&nbsp;<em>Nikkei Asia.<\/em>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/Business\/Transportation\/Freight-rates-spike-as-Asian-cargo-ships-jam-US-West-Coast-ports\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/Business\/Transportation\/Freight-rates-spike-as-Asian-cargo-ships-jam-US-West-Coast-ports<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><sup>3<\/sup>He, Laura (2021 June 18)&nbsp;A huge backlog at China&#8217;s ports could spoil&nbsp;your holiday&nbsp;shopping this&nbsp;year.&nbsp;<em>CNN Business.&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/06\/17\/business\/china-ports-global-supply-chain-intl-hnk\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/06\/17\/business\/china-ports-global-supply-chain-intl-hnk\/index.html<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Never has the global supply chain experienced such overwhelming demand nor exponential cost increases that it has this past year&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatpackaging.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}