The world is experiencing a logistical crisis unprecedented in the modern era. The paralysis of the global distribution chain for much of 2020, as a result of restrictions and confinements, was followed by an upturn in demand. Millions of people were interested in buying everything that they had not been able to buy for months. The sum of both factors caused delays in the manufacturing chain … and a huge bottleneck in the distribution chain.
Or what is the same, scarcity and high prices. But in some countries more than in others.
The precedent. The United Kingdom is perhaps the extreme example of everything related in the first paragraph. To the rigors of the pandemic and a still limping economy, we must add the self-imposed barriers of Brexit. Although it has been buried in oblivion, 2021 marked the final break between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Long before the logistics crisis hit the whole world, the British were living their own with long lines of trucks on the border and rotten fish.
Big time. The situation today is worse. They manifest it these imagesResigned to an ongoing shortage, the country’s supermarkets have begun to remove shelves and aisles from their surfaces. The alternative was to show them empty, a more depressing picture. Tesco has been one of the most prominent chains in the decision. Some of its stores evoke the austere stores of the communist bloc, long before the buoyant supermarkets of hyper-consumer capitalism.
This was the Tesco that I shop in yesterday. I felt sick and tearful. pic.twitter.com/byVo9v5XkY
– Amanda Brooks 🏴🕊️🐕🎨🎭🔬 (@ MrsABC321) September 6, 2021
“Pingdemia”. As we saw a month ago, the press has dubbed the phenomenon “pingdemic”. The term summed up the mix of catastrophic misfortunes that had plagued the local British economy: a crippled global supply chain; absence of qualified workers due to Brexit; and a close contact isolation protocol that had plunged direct consumption and sales in the main establishments. There were neither products nor were there enough workers available nor were there consumers able to buy them.
No truckers. The attention of the press has focused on the shortage of labor. At the end of last month, the British distributors and suppliers employers estimated the number of workers needed to regain normalcy at 14,000 (15% of its workforce). There are no truckers. Without them, factories have re-scaled their operations: chicken production has fallen 10%; McDonalds has stopped marketing smoothies; and Nando’s, a popular chain, has closed 45 stores after running out of its signature dish.
All eyes are on the policy of “self-isolation” promoted by the government. The criteria for considering a person “close contact” is so low that it has confined thousands and thousands of carriers, people in contact with many people throughout a day. Without access to foreign labor (ahem), there are no substitutes.
Christmas beer. The crisis is so deep that it threatens to upset two of the pillars of British culture: beer and the Christmas campaign. The Washington Post talks about the first, picking up the bitter complaints of many pubs, increasingly underserved by Carling or Coors. All the media are already talking about the second: distributors assume that the crisis will last during the last quarter of the year, if not longer. 100,000 carriers are required, of whom 20,000 were European citizens who have left the country post-Brexit.
Goes for long. The idea of a Christmas mortgaged again by the coronavirus extends to the rest of the planet. The ten busiest ports on the planet continue to operate at half throttle due to anti-covid protocols; the price of containers, a rare commodity today, has skyrocketed; and queues and long waits are already the norm for any commercial exchange between one side of the world and the other. And the United Kingdom is affected by all of this twice. Another Brexit milestone.