Miller Magazine Issue: 145 January 2022

57 COVER STORY MILLER / january 2022 to their concerns of not having enough wheat supplies in the country which could cause price inflation. As a result, we witnessed an increased demand for grains globally, which caused high pressure on logistics and freight networks, causing higher shipping costs. But if we look back to the stem of the problem, we find that when the pandemic first occurred in Wuhan, many companies in China had to temporarily shut down their business, so companies which were sourc- ing from Chinese suppliers were badly affected. And after the spreading of the virus worldwide, these in- terruptions were extended and affected the flow of productions due to lack of raw material, spare parts, or even lack of technical and operations team coming from abroad, which caused serious work delays or in some severe situations, the suspension of work. More- over, at the beginning of the pandemic, the rail, air and ocean shipment stopped moving through affected re- gions which caused delays and errors in shipping lines worldwide. And what escalated the problem more was the fact that ocean carriers began to do “blank-sail- ing” as a result of the decreased demand or canceled orders. This disruption of global movement of trade exchange caused having many empty containers scat- tered at different ports of Europe, America and oth- er countries, so the sudden proceed of business and economic activity, while at the same time having lack of empty containers at the port of destination, which couldn’t be controlled, resulted in freight delays, caus- ing delayed lead-time and delivery of goods and as a result the noticeable price increase in logistics and shipping costs, and of course to the noticeable delay in maritime traffic. Unfortunately, the pandemic was accompanied by other difficult situations such as the extreme weather conditions in major wheat producing countries like the USA, Canada and Russia which caused a bad harvest- ing season for the year 2021. In addition to that, there was a sharp price increase in oil and energy, and also the incident at the Suez Canal when the EverGiven mega-ship blocked traffic for almost a week in March 2021 causing further delays and increases in freight rates. All these disruptions influenced the work of the en- tire supply chain including the supplier, manufactur-