Supply Chain Delay in Canada ahead of Shopping Season
Source：theglobeandmail
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Toronto
Update Time：2021/12/07
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the global supply chain by ways of inducing surging demand for particular goods, factory shutdowns, and labor market interruption – to name a few, making it harder to source consumer products and raw materials. As said by Dave Earle, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the BC Trucking Association, even small delays in shipments can quickly compound, leading to problems across the warehousing and transportation network. The reason being, “we run in a world of lean production with ‘just-in-time delivery,’ everything gets held up. So if you’ve got a product that needs five precursors, three are available, and two aren’t, nothing moves until everything is available”.
In Canada, backlog of container ships at the country’s ports shows no signs of alleviation heading into the holiday seasons (i.e., Black Fridays and Christmas), although the level of dysfunction is far less severe than in the United States. The Port of Montreal, Canada’s second-biggest port, has been processing higher-than-normal container volumes since May 2021. Fortunately, Daniel Dagenais, the Port’s Vice President of Operations said the operations are “relatively fluid” and there are no vessels anchored waiting to dock. The Port’s performance statistics as of the first week of October 2021 shows that incoming containers are currently spending 3.5 days on average on Montreal’s docks before they are loaded onto trains. The Port of Vancouver said cargo is moving steadily through this Canada’s largest port, and disruptions are actually seen in other parts of the supply chain. Robert Lewis-Manning, the President of the Chamber of Shopping, confirms that the key problem facing Canadian supply chain is not insufficient port capacity but lack of land space. Take Vancouver’s main ports as an example, they are now operating all day and all night, and have not had the same labor shortage challenge as the major ports on American West Coast. However, without the space, it is difficult to move the large number of containers out of the terminals, get them to warehouses, unpack and send them on trucks, and the result is supply chain congestion.
Despite of shipping backlog, several of the large companies which had changed their American operating hours believe their Canadian operations do not require the same adjustment, citing they are prepared for the peak season. However, the fact is although the issue may not be as extreme in Canada as in the U.S., it is still causing some challenges for Canadian importers. Martin Lieberman, Managing Partner of Lamour Group, which imports clothing for retailers Joe Fresh and New Balance, said that the product turnaround time that his company allocates increased from 120 days to 180 days after the pandemic since the in-transit inventory increased from 10% to probably 40% today. He urged the Canadian federal government to address supply-chain problems. In response, spokesperson from Transport Canada assured that “we are in close contact with the transportation industry network to assess the fluidity of Canadian cargo movements, congestion points and potential solutions such as the implementation of active traffic management measures in British Columbia to support efficient port/inter-modal operations.”
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ahead-of-shopping-season-supply-chain-fears-in-canada-us-ramp-up/