Swedish retail giant IKEA has followed US retailers Walmart & Home Depot in addressing shipping congestion by chartering its own containerships. IKEA has also bought its own shipping containers to ensure goods can keep moving on time, with capacity lacking in a market experiencing soaring freight rates.
The move was spurred by delays to the 100 containers Ikea had on the 20,388-teu Ever Given (built 2018), which made global headlines when it grounded in the Suez Canal in March.
"Congestion in ports combined with historically high demand has created an imbalance in the entire world market for maritime transport," Ikea's product deliveries director Mikael Redin said.
Walmart has taken shipping matters into its own hands, chartering a number of ships from August 2021 onwards. The giant supermarket chain followed the footsteps of Home Depot in deciding to move some of its goods on the transpacific via tonnage it controls rather than pay sky high rates to global liners for shipments that tend to arrive late.
Walmart’s CEO, John Furner, revealed: “We have chartered vessels … we’ve secured capacity for the third and fourth quarter and feel good about the inventory positioning particularly compared to last year with inventory up 20% across the segments.”
According to Steve Ferreira, the CEO of New York-based consultancy Ocean Audit, Walmart has already completed two voyages, both arriving in the US this month, using Walmart branded 53 ft containers. The first voyage had 177 53 ft boxes onboard, and the second one contained 247 similarly sized containers.
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