Deserted Chinese factories, closed roads, canceled flights, postponed stopovers and by infecting individuals, the coronavirus also affects whole swathes of the world industry, causing disruptions of supply in production chains and shortages in anticipation once stocks are exhausted. International freight is one of the industries highly affected by the sudden appearance of the Coronavirus.

China has conquered the global economy for the past 20 years, making it difficult to find other suppliers at short notice. This situation completely disrupts the international transport chain, with an increasing impact on air and sea freight, as underlined by the international association of air transport agents, FIATA.

Moreover, potential trade restrictions on goods from China are put in place prevent the spread of the coronavirus. These risks including closure of ports and quarantine processes should also be taken into account.

As far as online retail is concerned, since it takes more or less 24 hours for the packages to reach their destination, during that time the risk of virus transmission could effectively be reduced as doctors claim that this virus is not able to survive on non-living things for long. Nonetheless, purchasers all over the world are highly concerned about receiving any type of packages from Wuhan and other parts of China. There are also potential risks of import restrictions as international trade would go down in volumes, thus leading to lesser containerized cargo being shipped. This could among others affect trucking companies, shippers and freight forwarders.

As a part of general efforts to help China and contain the possible spreading of the virus, our MWG offices in The Netherlands and Italy have been busy with sending masks, overalls – protective clothing to China, as follows:

8 February → 35 pallets, 4688kg,
CBM 45.54 with 79264 masks to Shanghai

16 February → 58 cartons, 386kg,
CBM 5.33 with 15500 masks to Beijing

23 February → 285 cartons, 6668kg,
CBM 79.06 with 12790 pieces/overalls (protective clothing) to Guangzhou

26 February → 16 pallets, 2827kg, 
CBM 29.46 with 10515 pieces/overalls (protective clothing) to Shanghai