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Supply
Chain by the Numbers |
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- April 7, 2022
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NRF Says Retail Sales will be Strong in 2022; Stuck Ship to Try Unloading Container; Price of Sunflower, Other Oils, Soaring with Ukraine War; Amazon Workers in New York says Yes to Makeshift Union |
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6-8% |
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That is the predicted rise in US true retail sales for 2022, according to a forecast from the National Retail Federation (NRF) this week. NRF’s sales numbers do not include automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants. While that growth rate would be below the 14% retail sales growth seen in 2021, that was the highest growth rate in more than 20 years, coming off very weak numbers in 2020. But a 6-8% growth rate is still very strong, and if accurate would be well above the 10-year, pre-pandemic retail sales growth rate of 3.7%. But the high estimate unfortunately comes in part as the result of significant inflation, which could put the US economy in a tailspin. Still, the NRF said it anticipates strong job and wage growth and declining unemployment this year, while pegging full-year GDP growth to come in around 3.5% in 2022. |
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| That was the percent of workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York who voted to join a union in a widely reported victory for labor late last week. It’s newsworthy because this marks the first Amazon FC to organize in the US, though there are several unionized facilities in Europe. Labor expects this success to spur other organizing efforts at Amazon logistics facilities. Another nearby Amazon sorting center will also be voting on joining the union in late April. It is a little odd, as it is a sort of makeshift union pulled together by former Amazon employees, including one worker who was fired from his job there for allegedly violating Amazon COVID protocol policies while he was protesting working at conditions at the Staten Island FC. But that union can claim victory, and may pick up another site at the sorting center in a few weeks. |
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5000 |
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That is how many shipping containers are now planned to be somehow removed from the Ever Foward ship, stuck in Chesapeake Bay, in a plan B move iafter plan A failed. The ship spectacularly ran aground 24-feet deep into the mud all the way back on March 13. It has not received anywhere near the reporting generated when the Ever Given became stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021, but that’s because that event blocked traffic for many days through the busy waterway. And yes, as could be guessed from the names of the ships, both stuck vessels were under the operation of Taiwanese carrier Evergreen Line. Crews have already had to dig out at least 84,000 cubic yards of mud from around the vessel to no avail. Still more dredging is planned after the containers are removed. Last week, five tugboats couldn’t get the ship moving forward, so the next day seven tugboats gave it a shot. No luck. |
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That is the rise in the global price of sunflower oil at the end of March versus 2022. Part of that is certainly the result of the war in Ukraine, as the country previously exported about 47% of the world’s supply of the oil, according to research firm Mintec. But shipments out of the country of sunflower oil and seeds have fallen to almost nothing due to the war, disrupting supplies of an oil widely used for cooking and in processed food products, including bread. The Wall Street Journal reports that the shortage of Ukrainian sunflower oil has triggered a domino effect that underscores how interconnected global commodity markets are, pushing up the price of other oils produced elsewhere, with rapeseed oil up 72%, while the price of soybean oil is up 41%.
