Shipping Disruption Continues With No End In Sight
Posted on Jun 22, 2021A BBC news article on shipping disruption highlights the problems many UK businesses are experiencing as shipping companies act with little or no competition on rates they charge, whilst the UK continues to try and shake off COVID-19 and Brexit-related import and export problems, highlights Simon Winfield, chairman of the UK Gasket & Sealing Association.
He states that the hugely inflated rates that began to appear towards the end of 2020, which were expected to ease by the second quarter of 2021, now look to remain effective or worsen in the second half of the year and could well last into 2022.
The net result is the continued shortages of raw materials and products and the inevitable increase in pricing to the UK public with predicted price increases on some products of 40%.
The UK government appears to be happy to ignore these issues, claims Simon, as well as problems with UK deep water ports such as Felixstowe, or to address the unwillingness of European shipping companies to offload and transport containers across the Channel with the EU.
These issues are having a detrimental impact on UK manufacturing and despite supporting sound bites from ministers, actions to investigate and address the issues are entirely absent.
Click here to read the full BBC article.
