Happy Chinese New Year!

2021 Celebrates the Year of the Ox, Starting Friday, February 12

JMC Global wishes you a healthy & prosperous Chinese New Year! February 12 marks the beginning of the 2021 Lunar New Year: the Year of the Ox. The Ox is connected to Yin, which embodies development and evolution. The Ox itself represents hard work, positivity, and honesty to bring in this fresh new year.

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China and much of Asia will be on holiday between February 12-20. Most factories and companies will be closed, but, with Covid still present, the Chinese government is asking residents not to go to their hometowns for the New Year, and instead to gather with family remotely. Though it is not a mandatory regulation, it is likely that most citizens will comply.

We also have been told that 40-50% of factories are not planning to go on their normal holiday mode. Many manufacturers may be doing skeleton crews or working through some of the holiday to fulfil orders from the US and Europe and catch up on production targets.

The weeks leading up to Chinese New Year present a shipping challenge as manufacturers and forwarders alike fight for available space to ship as much as possible prior to shutting down for the week-long holiday. This year's bottleneck is even worse than usual because of port congestion and container imbalance, among other factors.

Bookings made for the weeks before Chinese New Year are costing an additional $2,000 to $3,000 per container with premium fees in addition to already high rates. Despite -- or because of -- this price increase, it has become common for carriers to leave containers at the dock that were sold at lower contracted prices in order to load containers sold at spiked spot prices. Some analysts are reporting that 35% of containers have been "rolled."

You will need to take all these factors into account when preparing your budget and timeline for current or future projects. Talk to your JMC project manager for tips on how to handle the constantly changing conditions of the shipping industry.

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Factories and ports across China and much of Asia will be closed for approximately two weeks:
CHINA & MALAYSIA February 11-17
HONG KONG February 12-16
TAIWAN & VIETNAM February 10-16
KOREA February 11-14