A video from the US National Coastguard has illustrated the scale of how busy major ports are in early 2021, as ports struggle to cope with the volume of container ships trying to offload goods.
The container bottleneck is affecting ports in Europe, North America, the UK and elsewhere, in turn hitting availability and the supply chain across multiple industries, including the fastener, tools and related sectors.
The under pressure supply chain has had to cope with unexpected Covid lockdown spending and behaviour, which has placed unexpected demand on items - online marketplace Manomano told Torque Magazine last year that sales of power tools were up a whopping 244% and joinery sales up 316%.
The congestion is heaped upon a number of other disruptions affecting product supplies at ports, including a shortage of containers, which in turn is pushing up product prices.
The US Coastguard footage was filmed at the Port of Los Angeles in January, but it is widely believed that the current container problems will persist throughout the first half of 2021 at least.
Watch the video below:
Official U.S. Coast Guard video by Petty Officer 1st Class Richard Brahm.
In the UK, the Port of Felixstowe said high container volumes will impact normal operation "well into Q1".
