The unprecedented crisis of container shortage across the globe has now led exporters in Turkey to replace containers for their consignments with wooden boxes.
One such exporter is the marble firm from the Denizli province of western Turkey which due to immensely high freight rates and container shortage decided to use wooden cartons and boxes for their export of 11 tons of processed marble to the US, its main market which usually would have occurred in 400 freight containers.
The root cause of the problem is the shortage of containers at Asian ports due to them being stuck at ports of the US or other European countries as the exports from the latter group of countries plummeted significantly during the pandemic, which led to skyrocketing freight rates with limited space on vessels.
Even though the pandemic-related restrictions have been relaxed in many countries, exports from the same have not picked up pace yet, which is the cause of the global container shortage. It has now turned out to be a major obstacle in the road to recovery of the global economy as freight rates maintain a steady rise.
Mr. Murat Yener, the chairperson of DN Mermer, the marble exporting company of Denizli said, “The container crisis and rising shipping costs have made it difficult for us to compete with our competitors abroad,” as he praised the new solution of using wooden boxes for export by his company to tackle the container crisis.
He went on to emphasize the fact that this marked the very first time that any exports were made in wooden boxes to the US. According to the chairperson of DENMERDER, Mr. Sungur said that earlier, a similar consignment of marble was also made to Egypt.
The worldwide application of such unique tackles like the use of wooden boxes for exports, against the container crisis, is the only way ahead for businesses based out of major Asian countries as container shortage and repositioning continue to ravage global markets.
