Ports might need 24/7 operations to ease supply chain issues: food professor

A Dalhousie University professor believes more governments will have to expand operations at ports to help alleviate supply chain issues.

In October, President Joe Biden announced he'd try to tame inflation by striking a deal to expand operations at the Port of Los Angeles by having it run 24 hours, seven days a week.

Food professor Sylvain Charlebois said this is something ports in Canada might need to consider adopting for a while as the world currently handles a slower supply chain.

“Nothing is overly predictable, or at least nothing is as predictable as it used to be,” he told CityNews Halifax. “What the Biden administration did in L.A. was just to give a chance to the authority to manage the flow of goods and at least have a capacity to do it with more people. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more governments doing the same thing.”

Issues such as congestion and delays have been backing up supply chains, and it's only expected to get worse.

Last week, Loblaw Companies Ltd. and Metro Inc. — two of Canada's biggest grocers — said inflation and supply chain issues could lead to higher food prices and brief shortages of some items.

At the beginning of November, 21 groups in the food industry signed a joint statement calling for government assistance to address issues affecting the global supply chain.

That statement includes issues such as port congestion, delays and “exploding costs” in container shipping, adding that these issues will “create long-lasting impacts to the detriment of all North American economies.”

“What's interesting now is that before the pandemic, barely anyone was talking about supply chain management; barely anyone was talking about ports and logistics,” Charlebois said. “Now, people are concerned.”

He chalks that up to people seeing empty shelves, particularly early in the pandemic, of products like toilet paper, hand sanitizer and paper towel.

“We're seeing the imperfection of supply chain management, and people are listening, people are paying attention,” he said. “Lobby groups are taking advantage or capitalizing on the fact that we are paying attention to these issues right now.”

He said when ports and airports have less cargo going through, less money is generated. So, it's clear why some of these groups are lobbying.

But Charlebois doesn't want to undermine these organizations. He said he believes what they're saying is “absolutely true,” but that it's not quite yet “Armageddon.”

“I think what these groups are telling us is to, 'Change our expectations as consumers and to look at this from a very rational point of view,'” he said.

In terms of keeping ports operating 24/7, it doesn't seem to be that easy of a solution for supply chain issues.

A couple of weeks after President Biden announced California ports to remain open all night, Business Insider found that the change wasn't working because there were no truckers to collect the incoming cargo.

That's due to several issues including full warehouses, a lack of a chassis to hold cargo and a record shortage (80,000) of drivers in the United States.

“Restarting a global economy is just not something we've done frequently,” he said. “We have to keep things in perspective here. We're slowly coming back; we're seeing the entire economy coming back.”