Supply chains go travel-style: All-inclusive logistics present opportunities for Investors

It is difficult to get goods moved around the world. Previously the supply chain industry was a race to zero – offering the lowest possible price and the fastest possible delivery. But with the recent logistics challenges come both an increased willingness from companies to pay a premium for getting their goods first in line, and enhanced competition in the logistics sector. In this piece we look at how the latter creates opportunities for investors.

With container prices soaring and the possibility of getting goods offloaded in harbours decreasing, it is getting increasingly important for companies to get an all-inclusive deal with their logistics partner and be a premium partner who can get their goods prioritised over other’s. According to Saxo’s Head of Equity Strategies, Peter Garnry, the current supply constraints split the logistics sector in two: “With the challenges, we are experiencing, we have seen a bigger move towards what I guess you can call all-inclusive logistics companies, instead of the more traditional line shipping companies, where you just move a piece of good from A to B. Instead, companies need their logistic partner to take their goods all the way from factory to end-destination,” he says.

In the picture below it can be seen that the amount of cargo being off-loaded and loaded in a port like Hong-Kong has fallen roughly 25 pct. on average from 2020 to 2021. This serves as an example of bottlenecks in the global supply chains, which make it harder for goods to go from one place to another and thus delivery takes longer. The picture also shows the massive price increase on shipping containers from 2020 to 2021. This indicates the imbalance between the “supply of logistics” relative to the demand of it. In other words, as a company it’s harder to get your goods in a container and on a containership and therefore get it to where it’s being sold. Therefore, companies are willing to pay more for those containers.