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Do you know where your food comes from and how it got there?
Supply chains are complex and food supply chains even more so considering the special handling and regulatory requirements for many products. From source to consumers, from farm to fork, food supply chains are under stress. Adding the multiple crises and disasters in recent years, the current state of chaos in global logistics can challenge even the most experienced companies.
As producers struggle (like many of us) with global supply and demand, logistical problems, and the continued impact of COVID-19, understanding and rethinking the "lowest-cost approach" that we've been relying on for decades seems like a decision that is well worth the time.
Let's start by understanding, in a very simplified way, the flow of goods from one country to another. About 90% of the world's global shipping is done by sea and most of those shipments move in sea containers. Big steel boxes that are stacked on top of each other in vessels, some containing up to 24,000 (TEU) of these containers. That much freight is roughly the equivalent of a freight train measuring 70 kilometers, or 44 miles long.
There are two popular sizes of containers. One being 20-feet long, eight-feet wide and eight-feet high (20 x 8 x 8). The second one being 40 x 8 x 8. A 20-foot container can hold approximately 48,000 bananas. The empty container must be first be fetched empty from a terminal near the port in the country of origin. Depending on that origin, the shipper might...