The maritime industry’s current state is a perfect example of how numerous factors are at play in determining freight costs. The global pandemic rattled the maritime industry since its onset last year. Plummeting cargo volumes, capacity crunch, blank sailings, port congestion, and freight delays have led to an unprecedented spike in freight costs over the entire year.
Increased demand from across the world caused ships to wait longer than usual at various major ports worldwide. With an already constrained state of affairs at most of these ports, the Ever Given vessel’s recent fiasco getting stuck at the Suez Canal caused major disruptions across global supply chains. Extended shipping delays, equipment shortage, and a further spike to already high freight rates have caused heavy disruption to the Asia-Europe schedules and US-bound routes via the Suez Canal.