Fragile supply chains are facing a new headwind amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a new COVID-19 lockdown in one of China’s manufacturing hubs.
Shipping giants including Switzerland-based MSC, Denmark’s Maersk and France’s CMA CGM announced this month that they would halt cargo bookings to and from Russia until further notice, joining the growing list of companies to shun Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
And on Tuesday, after Russia signed a law enabling domestic airlines to keep planes leased from foreign companies, Maersk announced that it’s trying to retrieve tens of thousands of shipping containers from the country.
“We have about 50,000 of our containers in Russia today,” Maersk Chief Executive Soren Skou said. “Most of them are empty, they are our property. We need them, and we are very reluctant to leave them in Russia. For this reason, we still have some port calls in Russia.”
At the same time, Russian-owned and Russian-managed ships are currently unable to get into ports in the UK, Canada, and the EU while more than 100 ships and their crews are stranded at Ukrainian ports since Russia’s invasion.
“All of that is happening, and it’s leaving all these vessels traveling around the world with cargo already on board, with crew already on board, leaving them in complete no-man’s-land,” said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Click here to read more from Dani Romero in Yahoo Finance.