Freight firms are struggling to move vital goods and medical supplies

Lockdowns, restrictions snarl flow of critical goods

Canadian freight carriers are battling unprecedented challenges to deliver goods by land, air and ocean as sweeping travel restrictions, lockdowns and surges in demand strain critical links in global and domestic supply chains.

Canada, in an attempt to contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus, has joined other countries in barring international visitors, a measure that has grounded passenger airplanes that are also crucial to moving goods such as pharmaceutical ingredients.

At the provincial level, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia have established differing lists of essential services threatening to clog supply chains and tie up badly needed ocean freight containers, shippers say.

And panic buying at local grocery stores has disrupted the normal rates of demand, leaving trucks lined up at warehouses and distribution centres as grocers rush to fill bare shelves.

The result is a cluster of constraints “unlike anything we’ve seen before” said Ken Singh, president of Mississauga, Ont.- based Atlas Cargo.

“In 9/ 11, everything shut down, but that was a temporary situation and we knew there was an end,” said Singh, whose company moves goods in 97 countries via land, air and sea. “With this one, we have no idea where the point is that it will tip over, where it will end. It’s hard to measure the calamity, because we’ve just never experienced anything like it.”

Though almost every mode of transport has been shaken by the impact of the fast- moving virus, the most severe pain is being felt in airfreight, where travel bans have forced airlines to park planes and send employees home. Aside from carrying travellers, passenger planes are crucial to the quick delivery of goods including pharmaceutical and medical supplies.

“There are no passenger planes flying, so all the belly space that carried hundreds of thousands of kilos a day in cargo just doesn’t exist,” Singh said. “The hardest thing is getting things out of China by air. The rates they are charging have tripled because of the demand. Everybody is struggling, but that’s the biggest problem, getting goods out of Asia.”

For Apotex Inc., Canada’s largest pharmaceutical supplier, a combination of airfreight shortages, export controls on pharmaceutical products from India and a recently ordered 21- day nationwide lockdown in that country has significantly delayed delivery of the active pharmaceutical ingredients ( API) needed to manufacture three products: the pain reliever acetaminophen, hydroxychloroquine ( used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments) and acyclovir, an antiviral drug.