These days, everything from the seemingly random shortages of items in the grocery store to the small-print warnings that your online purchases could experience shipping delays can all be traced back to a woefully out-of-whack supply chain.
The everyday items and services we’ve all come to take for granted – buying half-and-half, getting the kitchen repainted, buying a new couch – have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and more specifically, the unpredictable Delta variant. As we’ve all been forced to acknowledge over the past 18 months, when one point in the supply chain gets disrupted or delayed, the reverberations are felt down the line. More than 70 container ships unable to unload goods at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach isn’t just a nightly news story. It’s the reason why the patio furniture you ordered in June still hasn’t arrived.
Fixing what ails the supply chain won’t be easy or quick, experts say. At its core, the problems plaguing nearly every disruption along this globally interconnected network is a lack of labor. The container ships off the coast of California don’t have the longshoreman to unload them. A shortage of truck drivers – a problem that existed pre-pandemic, but one that has only worsened since – means goods can’t get from the ports to warehouses to then find their way to retailers and consumers.
Tony Costa, chief information officer at Bumble Bee Seafood, says the pandemic has been a bit of a “double-edged sword” for his company. In 2020, demand for Bumble Bee’s products soared, with 6 million new customers trying the company’s shelf-stable offerings as the pandemic unfolded.
However, a spike in the Delta variant in some of the countries where it sources goods is now forcing Bumble Bee to look for different suppliers. “We have all this renewed interest in our products, but we have all this disruption in the supply chain,” he says. “It’s so integrated globally that any one issue has an impact on everything downstream.”
Click here to read the full story from Susan Caminiti at CNBC.com.