Chinese state-owned shipping firm COSCO has become the latest company to suspend its routes to Israel through the Red Sea due to the threat of Houthi attacks, it has been reported.
The Yemen-based Houthis have launched a series of anti-ship ballistic missiles towards Red Sea shipping lanes which they say is in response to Israel’s military offensive against Hamas.
The tensions in the region have already prompted Danish shipping company Maersk to suspend its passage through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Other shipping firms, including Hapag-Lloyd, Evergreen Line and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, have also stopped their routes through the waters.
You’re right about the rest, but the margins aren’t really that thin. The official numbers are AFTER all sorts of tax avoidance tricks.
Not that sky high profits are gonna stop them from pretending that they HAVE TO pass every new expense onto consumers, of course.
You are correct.
A more in depth version of what I meant would be something like… margin squeeze + delays -> more delays -> more delays /of everything/ causing a kind of general, network style problem of firms that rely on inventory arriving on schedule paying premiums for more reliable delivery dates for their either assembled or premium products to hit their own delivery dates.
This kind of thing can spiral out of control easily as it did when the Suez got the ship wedged in it during covid. Its hard to summarize it neatly other than the logistics version of death by a thousand cuts.