MSC CEO Søren Toft said, during a webinar, that there were no magic formulas that would solve the well-known congestion problems that ports of call were currently suffering from . The supply chain crunch? “It will drag on for at least another six months”
He added that they were doing their best to face the situation by investing in new capacity and buying new containers. Bringing more ships into the market was, however, not enough to solve the problem.
In the online conference reported by Lloyds List, Toft pointed out that over the course of the year the vessels in the MSC fleet, 630 in all, had accumulated between 5,000 and 6,000 days of schedule delays. That’s an average of nine days per ship. This means that MSC had to add a new ship for every outbound trip.
According to Toft, to restore efficiency to the supply chain, more workers are needed to pick up and transport containers from terminals, and more people are needed in warehouses.
Government intervention can also be useful, insofar as it encourages the development of infrastructural facilities in congested ports.
Translation by Giles Foster
