IPO LARA NI IṢỌRỌ IṢẸ INA
There is only 3 months away from 4th of July ( America’s Independence Day), and it is a very important day for Americans who are supposed to celebrate the very special day with fireworks. Large amounts of fireworks must be shipped to the soil of united states before every May. However, it seems that American fireworks importers are looking at a rather sad situation in the season of 2021.
Container ship locations, Jan. 13 (Map: MarineTraffic)
Transportation problem has been the headache since pandemic broke out in 2019, it created a series of shortage of containers in the past few months and a gridlock in many ports currently. The pandemic has disrupted trade to an extraordinary degree, driving up the cost of shipping goods and adding a fresh challenge to the global economic recovery, especially the fireworks industry.
“The pandemic has thrown the world’s transportation network into total chaos creating obstacles at every turn,” NFA President Steve Houser and over 1,300 NFA members, fireworks company owners and employees wrote to the Department of Transportation. “We are writing to ask that you immediately examine our nation’s port and transportation infrastructure to see where the bottlenecks are, and immediately implement the changes necessary to streamline the system and return it to pre-COVID-19 conditions. If this is not done within the next few weeks, we fear that this year's fireworks season will never take place.”
------from saveourfireworks.blogspot.com
Let's hear about it from news coverage
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Lars Mikael Jensen when being asked by Washington Post, head of Global Ocean Network at A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company. “All the links in the supply chain are stretched. The ships, the trucks, the warehouses.” According to the report by NFA(National Fireworks Association), shipping time from China to the United States has doubled from 30 to 60 days, and the cost to ship a forty-foot container of consumer fireworks has nearly doubled in price from over $9,300 to $17,700 per container. Finally, it now takes close to 21 days to unload a container vessel at the Long Beach, California port. Here is a letter of calling attention to the problems facing the transportation, logistics and supply chain of American consumer fireworks industry to Department of Transportation in the USA, by NFA President Mr. Steve Houser, and cosigned by over 1,300 NFA members, fireworks company owners and employees.
The rest of the signed names not shown in this passage