Container ships booked out for months due to high demand for medical products and electronics.
The ports are overcrowded, the cargo ships are booked out for months, horrendous surcharges for transport: European companies that depend on imports from China have to be prepared for long waiting times. As Spiegel writes, the first shipping companies are imposing a booking stop for imports from China because freight capacities are sold out and supply chains are stalling. “Everything that can swim is on the water,” the magazine quotes the manager of a German logistics group.
Horrible prices
Those who order anyway have to pay horrific delivery prices. Not only for the sea route, but also for rail transport. Bringing a standard container to Germany by train from Wuhan, China, currently costs $ 8,350 with some providers. For the truck transport from Wuhan to Germany, 28,880 euros are now required for 20 tons of cargo. The journey takes around 15 days.
protective gear
The delivery bottlenecks could again mean that protective equipment to combat the corona pandemic is becoming scarce in Europe. “99 percent of protective clothing comes from Asia,” says Michael Koch, project manager at the medical wholesaler Medika zum Spiegel. The Chinese New Year on February 12, 2021 means “six weeks without production and eight to ten weeks without any new goods from China. We will notice that ”.
Record dependency
Europe's dependence on imports from China rose to a record level in the Corona year. Above all, the high demand for medical products and electronics ensures a strong increase in imports. In Germany, imports from China rose by more than five percent from January to September to 85.2 billion euros. Conversely, German exports to China collapsed by 9 percent.