The Urethane Blog
Everchem Updates
VOLUME XXI
September 14, 2023
Everchem’s exclusive Closers Only Club is reserved for only the highest caliber brass-baller salesmen in the chemical industry. Watch the hype video and be introduced to the top of the league: — read more
June 21, 2021
Why you should never open unknown emails: Fighting ransomware attackers
Users — human beings — are the weakest link in even the ‘safest’ network
Published: June 20, 2021 19:30 Jay Hilotin, Senior Assistant Editor
Highlights
- Why ransomware attacks are spiking amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Know the top tips to avoid falling victim to darkweb attacks
- Know the dos and don’t of safe email practices.
Dubai: You think your network is “bomb-proof”? Or your organisation’s digital assets are “safe”? Think again. No matter how airtight you think work or organisation’s network is, there’s always a way in for the most persistent intruders. From the hackers’ point of view, we — the end users — are the best route of an hack. And this time, those who work from home are prized targets.
What’s the link between ransomware and pandemic?
Make no mistake: We are still in the midst of a health pandemic. And we’re also still in the midst of a digital pandemic of ransomware attacks. These are organised, deliberate attacks on increasingly significant targets. There are signs people and businesses are facing a chronic failure in finding ways to keep them at bay.
Why are ransomware attacks on the rise?
Ransomware attacks have spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, say IT security professionals. “There’s one simple reason: More people are working away from the office, where security controls are comparatively weak,” said Anoop Kumar Pauval, Information Security Manager at Gulf News’ IT Department.
“At home, connected to work via remote data access, end-users tend to be less protected, and are more vulnerable,” Pauval added. He cited example, Check Point Research’s (CPR) latest report (published in May) found a 102% increase in ransomware attacks this 2021 compared to the beginning of 2020. “There are no signs of the attacks slowing down.”
What’s the usual route of a ransomware attack?
Most ransomware attacks exploit the vulnerabilities of employees to get through to organisation’s network. Most hacks are done this way, called “social engineering” attacks.
How do links pose a threat?
Emails are the most potent tools in the arsenal of cybercriminals. It comes int he form of a link or an attachment. If you open an unknown attachment or click a link in an email sent to you by a hacker, you’re roped in.
How can you tell the difference between legit email and hacker’s email?
There are email senders among people you know. They tend to be safer, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t exercise caution (especially with forwards). Some spams are obvious, but others are very smartly designed get past past the filters. They’re done by deception masters designed to dupe recipients. “Phishing” email is No. 1 way hackers get around firewalls, filters and antivirus.
Should I always trust emails from a friend or colleague?
No, even if it’s from a friend or colleague, take a pause before clicking anything further. Check the contents of the message they send along with it: Does it sound like it’s from them? A smarter way to avoid malware or phishing is to call the sender or speak in person, if possible, to confirm they sent the email. If you can’t be sure of its authenticity, simply delete.
Top 5 biggest ransomeware payouts:
1. CWT Global ($4.5 million) | Date: July 2020 | The US travel services company CWT Global set a world record for the largest ever ransom payment, after it handed over $4.5 million in bitcoin to the Ragnar Locker ransomware gang. The attack is believed to have taken down 30,000 computers and compromised two terabytes of data. Financial records, security documentation and employees’ personal details, such as email addresses and salary data, were all affected. Image Credit: View gallery as list 1/5
Why are ransomware very disruptive?
The threat is real, as can be seen by recent examples. There’s often a financial motive involved. The demands are also real, too. But the damage to operations can destroy an institution or organisation’s reputation.
How much is the average ransomeware payment?
As we’ve seen, attacks capturing an organisation’s data and systems are on the rise. One study shows that since the start of the pandemic, ransomware attacks have gone up by almost 500%.
The average ransom payment has also continued to climb, up 43% from the last quarter of 2020 to an average of over $200,000, according to one report.
$200,000
the average ransomware payout during Q1 2021
Worse, a ransom demand is often accompanied by a breach and extraction of company data — and a concurrent extortion threatening to release this data unless additional payments are made.
News about attacks against the CNA Financial and Colonial Pipelines are recent publicly-known examples of hacking events. There’s a much bigger section involving unknown pay-offs for which the victims never publicly declare the hack.
Who are the perpetrators?
They are evolving, from the stand-alone hackers to what are now known as “criminal collectives”, including the DarkSide, which behave like state-sponsored attackers. These collectives have created virtual organisations, sharpening their techniques in targeting specific sectors and companies. They patiently wait for the kills.
How big is the ‘cybercrime’ threat?
What’s the away around scams, spams and ransomware attacks.
It’s the dark underbelly of the online world. Cybercrime is a growing, highly successful and profitable “industry”. It is estimated that cybercrime costs will grow by 15% per year to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025. If it’s a country, it would be the world’s third-biggest “economy” — after those of the US States and China.
What’s the way around ransomware attacks?
Image when governments, health-care providers, online merchants like Amazon/ebay/Alibaba or other large organisations become beholden to cybercriminals? There’s certainly a way around the current state of affairs.
Intranets — closed, proprietary networks — might hold the key, say experts. As the internet evolves, a new trend emerges, with two distinct sides.
- Free-for-all internet:
This is the free-for-all, unfiltered, minimally regulated, “Wild West” type of internet anyone can access. This is the playground of the rising ranks of cybercriminals and everybody else, including you and me.
- Intranet
The second is “World Wide Intranet” — widely accessible but tightly controlled websites with stringent access controls to prevent criminal activity. Years ago, closed corporate intranets have gained popularity. This second type is rapidly evolving.
As such, as security measures and conditional access via multi-factor authentification will become a standard.
The internet needs a semblance of control — the price of not having them is immeasurably greater than the damage of any “restrictions”. It’s an inevitable outcome of the security threats mushrooming around us, compromising not only networks but individual the end users that use them.
June 21, 2021
Why you should never open unknown emails: Fighting ransomware attackers
Users — human beings — are the weakest link in even the ‘safest’ network
Published: June 20, 2021 19:30 Jay Hilotin, Senior Assistant Editor
Highlights
- Why ransomware attacks are spiking amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Know the top tips to avoid falling victim to darkweb attacks
- Know the dos and don’t of safe email practices.
Dubai: You think your network is “bomb-proof”? Or your organisation’s digital assets are “safe”? Think again. No matter how airtight you think work or organisation’s network is, there’s always a way in for the most persistent intruders. From the hackers’ point of view, we — the end users — are the best route of an hack. And this time, those who work from home are prized targets.
What’s the link between ransomware and pandemic?
Make no mistake: We are still in the midst of a health pandemic. And we’re also still in the midst of a digital pandemic of ransomware attacks. These are organised, deliberate attacks on increasingly significant targets. There are signs people and businesses are facing a chronic failure in finding ways to keep them at bay.
Why are ransomware attacks on the rise?
Ransomware attacks have spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, say IT security professionals. “There’s one simple reason: More people are working away from the office, where security controls are comparatively weak,” said Anoop Kumar Pauval, Information Security Manager at Gulf News’ IT Department.
“At home, connected to work via remote data access, end-users tend to be less protected, and are more vulnerable,” Pauval added. He cited example, Check Point Research’s (CPR) latest report (published in May) found a 102% increase in ransomware attacks this 2021 compared to the beginning of 2020. “There are no signs of the attacks slowing down.”
What’s the usual route of a ransomware attack?
Most ransomware attacks exploit the vulnerabilities of employees to get through to organisation’s network. Most hacks are done this way, called “social engineering” attacks.
How do links pose a threat?
Emails are the most potent tools in the arsenal of cybercriminals. It comes int he form of a link or an attachment. If you open an unknown attachment or click a link in an email sent to you by a hacker, you’re roped in.
How can you tell the difference between legit email and hacker’s email?
There are email senders among people you know. They tend to be safer, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t exercise caution (especially with forwards). Some spams are obvious, but others are very smartly designed get past past the filters. They’re done by deception masters designed to dupe recipients. “Phishing” email is No. 1 way hackers get around firewalls, filters and antivirus.
Should I always trust emails from a friend or colleague?
No, even if it’s from a friend or colleague, take a pause before clicking anything further. Check the contents of the message they send along with it: Does it sound like it’s from them? A smarter way to avoid malware or phishing is to call the sender or speak in person, if possible, to confirm they sent the email. If you can’t be sure of its authenticity, simply delete.
Top 5 biggest ransomeware payouts:
1. CWT Global ($4.5 million) | Date: July 2020 | The US travel services company CWT Global set a world record for the largest ever ransom payment, after it handed over $4.5 million in bitcoin to the Ragnar Locker ransomware gang. The attack is believed to have taken down 30,000 computers and compromised two terabytes of data. Financial records, security documentation and employees’ personal details, such as email addresses and salary data, were all affected. Image Credit: View gallery as list 1/5
Why are ransomware very disruptive?
The threat is real, as can be seen by recent examples. There’s often a financial motive involved. The demands are also real, too. But the damage to operations can destroy an institution or organisation’s reputation.
How much is the average ransomeware payment?
As we’ve seen, attacks capturing an organisation’s data and systems are on the rise. One study shows that since the start of the pandemic, ransomware attacks have gone up by almost 500%.
The average ransom payment has also continued to climb, up 43% from the last quarter of 2020 to an average of over $200,000, according to one report.
$200,000
the average ransomware payout during Q1 2021
Worse, a ransom demand is often accompanied by a breach and extraction of company data — and a concurrent extortion threatening to release this data unless additional payments are made.
News about attacks against the CNA Financial and Colonial Pipelines are recent publicly-known examples of hacking events. There’s a much bigger section involving unknown pay-offs for which the victims never publicly declare the hack.
Who are the perpetrators?
They are evolving, from the stand-alone hackers to what are now known as “criminal collectives”, including the DarkSide, which behave like state-sponsored attackers. These collectives have created virtual organisations, sharpening their techniques in targeting specific sectors and companies. They patiently wait for the kills.
How big is the ‘cybercrime’ threat?
What’s the away around scams, spams and ransomware attacks.
It’s the dark underbelly of the online world. Cybercrime is a growing, highly successful and profitable “industry”. It is estimated that cybercrime costs will grow by 15% per year to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025. If it’s a country, it would be the world’s third-biggest “economy” — after those of the US States and China.
What’s the way around ransomware attacks?
Image when governments, health-care providers, online merchants like Amazon/ebay/Alibaba or other large organisations become beholden to cybercriminals? There’s certainly a way around the current state of affairs.
Intranets — closed, proprietary networks — might hold the key, say experts. As the internet evolves, a new trend emerges, with two distinct sides.
- Free-for-all internet:
This is the free-for-all, unfiltered, minimally regulated, “Wild West” type of internet anyone can access. This is the playground of the rising ranks of cybercriminals and everybody else, including you and me.
- Intranet
The second is “World Wide Intranet” — widely accessible but tightly controlled websites with stringent access controls to prevent criminal activity. Years ago, closed corporate intranets have gained popularity. This second type is rapidly evolving.
As such, as security measures and conditional access via multi-factor authentification will become a standard.
The internet needs a semblance of control — the price of not having them is immeasurably greater than the damage of any “restrictions”. It’s an inevitable outcome of the security threats mushrooming around us, compromising not only networks but individual the end users that use them.
June 15, 2021
Why the world is in a shipping crisis
Rachel Premack Jun 11, 2021, 11:04 AM
- Your favorite brands are paying 10 times the typical price of shipping your stuff across the ocean.
- Shortages also abound.
- It’s all thanks to a chaos in maritime trade that’s been unfolding since last year.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
The price for a shipping container is looking a lot like a meme stock.
The surge in shipping costs points to our shortage of semiconductors, lumber, chicken, chlorine, and, really, “just about everything.” The pandemic broke the supply chain last year, and the shipping companies that move stuff all over the world still haven’t recovered.
We rely on a complex, global supply chain. It’s the reason we can get two-day shipping on ultra-cheap Wayfair furniture built in Vietnam or why seafood caught in the US is so cheap (much of it is actually processed in China before it’s shipped back here).
Ocean shipping powers our ability to buy a massive variety of inexpensive stuff. This system needs many things to function, but I’ll distill those into a few important elements:
- Massive ocean-faring ships
- Containers on the ships
- Places for the ships to park so that the containers can be unloaded
And, all of those things have broken at some point in the last year and a half! In fact, many of them are still broken. Here’s how that happened and why the shortages are still going on.
Our world’s weird new megaships
I am a newbie to the world of shipping. So, to better understand what’s going on with our current chaos, I chatted with Simon Sundboell, a 20-year veteran of the world of container shipping based in Copenhagen. He’s the founder of ocean shipping intelligence firm eeSea.
To understand the shipping debacle, Sundboell took me back to the mid-2000s. Ocean shipping was a more fragmented industry than it is today, and manufacturers and retailers could pit these various firms against each other to win low rates. To reach economies of scale, major ocean carriers began demanding larger ships.
An analysis of the fleet listed on the website of Hapag-Lloyd, which is the world’s sixth-largest ocean carrier by volume, makes that clear. I found that the average ship in the German ocean carrier’s line built in the 2000s could hold just under 6,400 containers of around 20-feet long. For ships built after 2010, that number nearly doubled to around 11,500.
Sundboell told me that these larger ships did manage to increase profitability for Maersk, MSC, and other major carriers — but margins were tight. Ships couldn’t be less than around 90% full in order to keep these carriers in business.
It reminds me of America’s bizarrely-long freight trains, which stretched to three miles long in order. On an entirely other note, chicken breasts have increased by 80% over the past few decades (and the birds themselves grow much faster).
In our pre-pandemic times, everything was just getting bigger and bigger! But perhaps we flew too close to the sun.
No ships
The first hit to the world’s ocean shipping network came in early spring of last year, Sundboell told me. As the pandemic spread around the globe, it was unclear if factories in Asia would be open, or if consumers globally would even have the ability to buy durable goods. So, they started canceling sailings.
“The carriers are sitting here in March 2020, looking at a market where they have no idea whether the demand side, meaning the containers that go on their vessels, are going to drop by 5%, 15%, 30% or 50%,” Sundboell told me. And recall that these companies can’t profitably runt their megaships unless they’re full.
As a result, carriers started to “blank,” or cancel, their sailings. One major shipping alliance announced cutbacks of up to 22% on voyages between Asia and Europe during the spring of 2020. Between Asia and North America, carriers slashed some 20% of capacity.
No parking
A slowdown in manufacturing, and the predictions of an economic meltdown, forced the shipping world into a standstill in the early half of 2020. By the latter half, the world was starting to “turn back on.”
Rather than turning frugal, consumers started spending all that cash they had tucked away for travel and restaurants on stuff. It’s no secret people started buying treadmills, couches, and hair dye more than ever. That trend is still firing up the US ports that handle our imports. The Port of Los Angeles, which is the United States’ largest by volume, broke its first-quarter cargo record this year. The Port of Long Beach, the second largest, handled more cargo than ever last month.
This unusual boom in volume has helped spark a massive port traffic jam. Let’s narrow in on Long Beach and Los Angeles, our country’s two biggest ports.
During the first half of 2020, data from the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association showed under 5% of shipments had a dwell time — the time a ship spends at a port rather than at sea — greater than five days. It steadily increased throughout the year. And from October through December of that year, around a quarter of ships were waiting more than five days.
By late January 2021, some 55 vessels were crowded around the LA and Long Beach ports, reportedly sitting in the ocean for up to two weeks. FreightWaves noted that it took longer for some of these ships just to get unloaded than it was for them to cross the Pacific.
Why is there a delay to unload these ships? The boom in demand is, of course, one leading reason. American ports are also seeing a shortage of labor. There’s an ongoing shortage of the longshoremen who who undertake the critical task of getting these containers off the ship and onto trucks or trains. Dozens were quarantined due to the coronavirus at varying points last year.
Above all, when something goes astray with ocean shipping, there’s a major butterfly effect. A ship that’s unloaded two weeks late in Los Angeles is also going to be two weeks late when it arrives back in, say, Chittagong, Bangladesh to load up on IKEA furniture. The ship before that may have been two weeks late, too, so the carrier might just cancel the ship IKEA was expecting space on, Sundboell said. Then IKEA will have to scramble for another way to move your nightstand — and potentially every order they had after that, which will now be pushed down the road.
No containers
Halfway into 2021, the situation has not improved.
There’s another shortage giving rise to our shortages: A lack of shipping containers. Or rather, a lack of containers where they need to be.
Some of these containers are being used on ships right now, as Flexport’s Ryan Petersen noted on Twitter this week. This includes ships that might be hanging out in the ocean, waiting to dock and get unloaded.
The bigger issue is that many of these containers are not going back to Asia to get reloaded with stuff.
US exports have not kept up with imports from China, our largest trans-Pacific trading partner. According to FreightWaves SONAR data, import volume from China via ocean shipping is up 54% year-over-year. Exports have only ticked up by 4.4%. That means lots of containers are leaving Asia, but not enough have been returning there.
Until recently, as Petersen explained on a recent episode of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots, ocean carriers didn’t realize they needed to be carrying more empty containers back than ever. We’re still correcting this imbalance of containers, and experts predict it will remain wonky until 2022.
At least the shipping scions are doing well
The dirty secret is that the bottlenecks hampering shipping right now is bad for seemingly everyone except the shipping companies. Should these containers stay in Los Angeles instead of gliding back over to Shanghai, that only reduces ocean shipping capacity… driving freight rates ever higher, and pumping up profits for major ocean cargo lines.
Indeed, these past few years are some of the first in a while that ocean carriers are winning the game. Maersk, for example, turned a profit of $2.9 billion in 2020; it lost money three of the four years preceding 2020.
Shipping companies didn’t have the upper hand against the brands whose stuff they carry before the pandemic. Now, Zara, IKEA, and their peers are scrambling for space on one of these ships and willing to pay top dollar, Sundboell told me.
That’s going to continue to make everything more expensive. Sundboell provided the example of Nike usually paying $2,000 for a 40-foot container full of sneakers. Now, that container might be more around $15,000 to $20,000.
A shoe or apparel manufacturer, like Nike, normally wouldn’t fret about the cost of moving your goods across the ocean. “It wasn’t something you’d ever worry about,” Sundboell told me. “Now suddenly at $20,000, you’re starting to see good that within margins that are no longer profitable to even sell it.”
Should we prepare for a sneaker shortage now? Get ready, folks…
https://www.businessinsider.com/shipping-crisis-causing-shortages-why-2021-6?op=1
June 15, 2021
Why the world is in a shipping crisis
Rachel Premack Jun 11, 2021, 11:04 AM
- Your favorite brands are paying 10 times the typical price of shipping your stuff across the ocean.
- Shortages also abound.
- It’s all thanks to a chaos in maritime trade that’s been unfolding since last year.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
The price for a shipping container is looking a lot like a meme stock.
The surge in shipping costs points to our shortage of semiconductors, lumber, chicken, chlorine, and, really, “just about everything.” The pandemic broke the supply chain last year, and the shipping companies that move stuff all over the world still haven’t recovered.
We rely on a complex, global supply chain. It’s the reason we can get two-day shipping on ultra-cheap Wayfair furniture built in Vietnam or why seafood caught in the US is so cheap (much of it is actually processed in China before it’s shipped back here).
Ocean shipping powers our ability to buy a massive variety of inexpensive stuff. This system needs many things to function, but I’ll distill those into a few important elements:
- Massive ocean-faring ships
- Containers on the ships
- Places for the ships to park so that the containers can be unloaded
And, all of those things have broken at some point in the last year and a half! In fact, many of them are still broken. Here’s how that happened and why the shortages are still going on.
Our world’s weird new megaships
I am a newbie to the world of shipping. So, to better understand what’s going on with our current chaos, I chatted with Simon Sundboell, a 20-year veteran of the world of container shipping based in Copenhagen. He’s the founder of ocean shipping intelligence firm eeSea.
To understand the shipping debacle, Sundboell took me back to the mid-2000s. Ocean shipping was a more fragmented industry than it is today, and manufacturers and retailers could pit these various firms against each other to win low rates. To reach economies of scale, major ocean carriers began demanding larger ships.
An analysis of the fleet listed on the website of Hapag-Lloyd, which is the world’s sixth-largest ocean carrier by volume, makes that clear. I found that the average ship in the German ocean carrier’s line built in the 2000s could hold just under 6,400 containers of around 20-feet long. For ships built after 2010, that number nearly doubled to around 11,500.
Sundboell told me that these larger ships did manage to increase profitability for Maersk, MSC, and other major carriers — but margins were tight. Ships couldn’t be less than around 90% full in order to keep these carriers in business.
It reminds me of America’s bizarrely-long freight trains, which stretched to three miles long in order. On an entirely other note, chicken breasts have increased by 80% over the past few decades (and the birds themselves grow much faster).
In our pre-pandemic times, everything was just getting bigger and bigger! But perhaps we flew too close to the sun.
No ships
The first hit to the world’s ocean shipping network came in early spring of last year, Sundboell told me. As the pandemic spread around the globe, it was unclear if factories in Asia would be open, or if consumers globally would even have the ability to buy durable goods. So, they started canceling sailings.
“The carriers are sitting here in March 2020, looking at a market where they have no idea whether the demand side, meaning the containers that go on their vessels, are going to drop by 5%, 15%, 30% or 50%,” Sundboell told me. And recall that these companies can’t profitably runt their megaships unless they’re full.
As a result, carriers started to “blank,” or cancel, their sailings. One major shipping alliance announced cutbacks of up to 22% on voyages between Asia and Europe during the spring of 2020. Between Asia and North America, carriers slashed some 20% of capacity.
No parking
A slowdown in manufacturing, and the predictions of an economic meltdown, forced the shipping world into a standstill in the early half of 2020. By the latter half, the world was starting to “turn back on.”
Rather than turning frugal, consumers started spending all that cash they had tucked away for travel and restaurants on stuff. It’s no secret people started buying treadmills, couches, and hair dye more than ever. That trend is still firing up the US ports that handle our imports. The Port of Los Angeles, which is the United States’ largest by volume, broke its first-quarter cargo record this year. The Port of Long Beach, the second largest, handled more cargo than ever last month.
This unusual boom in volume has helped spark a massive port traffic jam. Let’s narrow in on Long Beach and Los Angeles, our country’s two biggest ports.
During the first half of 2020, data from the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association showed under 5% of shipments had a dwell time — the time a ship spends at a port rather than at sea — greater than five days. It steadily increased throughout the year. And from October through December of that year, around a quarter of ships were waiting more than five days.
By late January 2021, some 55 vessels were crowded around the LA and Long Beach ports, reportedly sitting in the ocean for up to two weeks. FreightWaves noted that it took longer for some of these ships just to get unloaded than it was for them to cross the Pacific.
Why is there a delay to unload these ships? The boom in demand is, of course, one leading reason. American ports are also seeing a shortage of labor. There’s an ongoing shortage of the longshoremen who who undertake the critical task of getting these containers off the ship and onto trucks or trains. Dozens were quarantined due to the coronavirus at varying points last year.
Above all, when something goes astray with ocean shipping, there’s a major butterfly effect. A ship that’s unloaded two weeks late in Los Angeles is also going to be two weeks late when it arrives back in, say, Chittagong, Bangladesh to load up on IKEA furniture. The ship before that may have been two weeks late, too, so the carrier might just cancel the ship IKEA was expecting space on, Sundboell said. Then IKEA will have to scramble for another way to move your nightstand — and potentially every order they had after that, which will now be pushed down the road.
No containers
Halfway into 2021, the situation has not improved.
There’s another shortage giving rise to our shortages: A lack of shipping containers. Or rather, a lack of containers where they need to be.
Some of these containers are being used on ships right now, as Flexport’s Ryan Petersen noted on Twitter this week. This includes ships that might be hanging out in the ocean, waiting to dock and get unloaded.
The bigger issue is that many of these containers are not going back to Asia to get reloaded with stuff.
US exports have not kept up with imports from China, our largest trans-Pacific trading partner. According to FreightWaves SONAR data, import volume from China via ocean shipping is up 54% year-over-year. Exports have only ticked up by 4.4%. That means lots of containers are leaving Asia, but not enough have been returning there.
Until recently, as Petersen explained on a recent episode of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots, ocean carriers didn’t realize they needed to be carrying more empty containers back than ever. We’re still correcting this imbalance of containers, and experts predict it will remain wonky until 2022.
At least the shipping scions are doing well
The dirty secret is that the bottlenecks hampering shipping right now is bad for seemingly everyone except the shipping companies. Should these containers stay in Los Angeles instead of gliding back over to Shanghai, that only reduces ocean shipping capacity… driving freight rates ever higher, and pumping up profits for major ocean cargo lines.
Indeed, these past few years are some of the first in a while that ocean carriers are winning the game. Maersk, for example, turned a profit of $2.9 billion in 2020; it lost money three of the four years preceding 2020.
Shipping companies didn’t have the upper hand against the brands whose stuff they carry before the pandemic. Now, Zara, IKEA, and their peers are scrambling for space on one of these ships and willing to pay top dollar, Sundboell told me.
That’s going to continue to make everything more expensive. Sundboell provided the example of Nike usually paying $2,000 for a 40-foot container full of sneakers. Now, that container might be more around $15,000 to $20,000.
A shoe or apparel manufacturer, like Nike, normally wouldn’t fret about the cost of moving your goods across the ocean. “It wasn’t something you’d ever worry about,” Sundboell told me. “Now suddenly at $20,000, you’re starting to see good that within margins that are no longer profitable to even sell it.”
Should we prepare for a sneaker shortage now? Get ready, folks…
https://www.businessinsider.com/shipping-crisis-causing-shortages-why-2021-6?op=1
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