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For those that can't be bothered to read beyond the headline. "global shortage of shipping containers that’s upended the food trade." Shipping container short

For those that can't be bothered to read beyond the headline. "global shortage of shipping containers that’s upended the food trade." Shipping container shortage.

curmudgeon22 6y ago
Plus crop problems in Brazil: Arabica-coffee futures in New York have risen about 24% since the end of October following the damage to Brazilian groves.
derefr 6y ago
This confuses me, as shipping containers seem... really easy to produce. They're not CPUs; you don't need a special fab. They're corrugated boxes made of welded cold-rolled steel. Pretty much every country — every industry in every country! — should be able to scrape together the natural resources to make their own shipping containers. There should never be a shortage of supply of shipping containers, any more than there could have been a shortage in supply of, say, the hemp sacks used in bulk shipping in the 1700s. You need one? You make one! From the article: > Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest shipping company, said containers and charter vessels are temporarily unavailable for purchase or lease I have a feeling it's more about the ships. Shipbuilding is a pretty CapEx-intensive pursuit. Container production, not so much.
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  It could be the same reason why toilet paper struggled so much. Sure it's super easy to produce, but do you want to be on the hook for whatever you spent ramping up production when the shortage disappears between 1 month and 1 year from now?
- post_break 6y ago
  That feeling is the same thing with railcar shortages. They are super easy to produce. But no one wants to be stuck with them if there is a glut, only a few manufacturers of railcars and they don't scale like servers. They make a normal amount of railcars, and when they need more they can make what 10-20% more? And then since they are "easy" to produce they still might take weeks to months to finish because of parts they rely on all being strained as well.
  - derefr 6y ago
    > And then since they are "easy" to produce they still might take weeks to months to finish because of parts they rely on all being strained as well. I feel like a container factory would be a sensible thing to be vertically integrated: raw steel (or iron and carbon!) in; containers out; screws and bolts and any other needed stuff getting made during the process out of the same raw inputs. A lot like how IKEA's operation works (i.e. basically a vertically-integrated sawmill), but with metals. That approach doesn't vertically scale very well, but the techniques from it could be horizontally scaled pretty easily across a number of industries if well-known. This is what I was on about with the hemp sacks: every industry did used to make their own hemp sacks. It was easy, and the techniques and requirements were well-known, so every business that needed sacks just did what was necessary to make them, comparative advantage be damned. (Sort of like how every large factory today has its own machine shop, or how every modern building has its own internal water-treatment+recycling system.)
    - rzzzt 6y ago
      What do they ship raw steel in?
      - derefr 6y ago
        Usually, refineries are located very close to mines, such that raw ore doesn't spend much time being shipped around — because most of it's going to be slag, anyway, and it's a waste of money to ship that. Often ore is delivered into a refinery "directly" on a minecart; or, if not, then on a railcar loaded from buffer hoppers at the mine; but either way using point-to-point rail service between the two sites (i.e. not part of the rail network.)
- danaliv 6y ago
  Ports are congested too, which leaves ships (and their containers) stuck out at anchorages waiting to get in. Port of LA, for instance, has been bottlenecked for months. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/29/record-port-backups-hit-california-as-u-s-consumers-supercharge-purchases/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/29/record-port-backups-h... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/retailers-pay-more-to-fly-bikes-to-hot-tubs-from-china-as-backup-at-us-ports-delays-deliveries.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/retailers-pay-more-to-fly-bi...
- solidsnack9000 6y ago
  They are easy to produce but they are also needed in tremendous numbers, because a bunch got stuck in the USA (which tends to export less stuff) rather than in Asia (which tends to export more stuff, especially to the USA, where all the containers are).
m463 6y ago
they've known of this for a long time. The logistics folks have data for very accurate predictions: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/inside-californias-colossal-container-ship-traffic-jam/ https://www.freightwaves.com/news/inside-californias-colossa... (from a few months ago)
hardtke 6y ago
There is not so much a shortage but instead the empty containers are in the wrong place. With the US stimulus coupled with the lack of ability of American consumers to consume services like travel, imports to the US have surged. They've started adding an extra layer of containers on ships coming from China and a bunch of them have fallen off. In the past we would fill some of the containers going back to China with agricultural goods, but now empty containers are essentially more valuable than filled containers. Here's a marketplace article on the situation: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/03/17/inflation-shipping-container-rates-prices-soar-on-u-s-customer-demand/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/03/17/inflation-shipping-co...

For those that can't be bothered to read beyond the headline. "global shortage of shipping containers that’s upended the food trade." Shipping container shortage.

curmudgeon22 6y ago

Plus crop problems in Brazil: Arabica-coffee futures in New York have risen about 24% since the end of October following the damage to Brazilian groves.

derefr 6y ago

This confuses me, as shipping containers seem... really easy to produce. They're not CPUs; you don't need a special fab. They're corrugated boxes made of welded cold-rolled steel. Pretty much every country — every industry in every country! — should be able to scrape together the natural resources to make their own shipping containers. There should never be a shortage of supply of shipping containers, any more than there could have been a shortage in supply of, say, the hemp sacks used in bulk shipping in the 1700s. You need one? You make one! From the article: > Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest shipping company, said containers and charter vessels are temporarily unavailable for purchase or lease I have a feeling it's more about the ships. Shipbuilding is a pretty CapEx-intensive pursuit. Container production, not so much.

mrguyorama 6y ago
It could be the same reason why toilet paper struggled so much. Sure it's super easy to produce, but do you want to be on the hook for whatever you spent ramping up production when the shortage disappears between 1 month and 1 year from now?
post_break 6y ago
That feeling is the same thing with railcar shortages. They are super easy to produce. But no one wants to be stuck with them if there is a glut, only a few manufacturers of railcars and they don't scale like servers. They make a normal amount of railcars, and when they need more they can make what 10-20% more? And then since they are "easy" to produce they still might take weeks to months to finish because of parts they rely on all being strained as well.
- derefr 6y ago
  > And then since they are "easy" to produce they still might take weeks to months to finish because of parts they rely on all being strained as well. I feel like a container factory would be a sensible thing to be vertically integrated: raw steel (or iron and carbon!) in; containers out; screws and bolts and any other needed stuff getting made during the process out of the same raw inputs. A lot like how IKEA's operation works (i.e. basically a vertically-integrated sawmill), but with metals. That approach doesn't vertically scale very well, but the techniques from it could be horizontally scaled pretty easily across a number of industries if well-known. This is what I was on about with the hemp sacks: every industry did used to make their own hemp sacks. It was easy, and the techniques and requirements were well-known, so every business that needed sacks just did what was necessary to make them, comparative advantage be damned. (Sort of like how every large factory today has its own machine shop, or how every modern building has its own internal water-treatment+recycling system.)
  - rzzzt 6y ago
    What do they ship raw steel in?
    - derefr 6y ago
      Usually, refineries are located very close to mines, such that raw ore doesn't spend much time being shipped around — because most of it's going to be slag, anyway, and it's a waste of money to ship that. Often ore is delivered into a refinery "directly" on a minecart; or, if not, then on a railcar loaded from buffer hoppers at the mine; but either way using point-to-point rail service between the two sites (i.e. not part of the rail network.)
danaliv 6y ago
Ports are congested too, which leaves ships (and their containers) stuck out at anchorages waiting to get in. Port of LA, for instance, has been bottlenecked for months. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/29/record-port-backups-hit-california-as-u-s-consumers-supercharge-purchases/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/29/record-port-backups-h... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/retailers-pay-more-to-fly-bikes-to-hot-tubs-from-china-as-backup-at-us-ports-delays-deliveries.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/retailers-pay-more-to-fly-bi...
solidsnack9000 6y ago
They are easy to produce but they are also needed in tremendous numbers, because a bunch got stuck in the USA (which tends to export less stuff) rather than in Asia (which tends to export more stuff, especially to the USA, where all the containers are).

m463 6y ago

they've known of this for a long time. The logistics folks have data for very accurate predictions: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/inside-californias-colossal-container-ship-traffic-jam/ https://www.freightwaves.com/news/inside-californias-colossa... (from a few months ago)

hardtke 6y ago

There is not so much a shortage but instead the empty containers are in the wrong place. With the US stimulus coupled with the lack of ability of American consumers to consume services like travel, imports to the US have surged. They've started adding an extra layer of containers on ships coming from China and a bunch of them have fallen off. In the past we would fill some of the containers going back to China with agricultural goods, but now empty containers are essentially more valuable than filled containers. Here's a marketplace article on the situation: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/03/17/inflation-shipping-container-rates-prices-soar-on-u-s-customer-demand/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/03/17/inflation-shipping-co...