Coronavirus Crisis Creates Obstacles for Alaska Seafood Exports

The world is facing a coronavirus crisis and like every industry, it is also affecting the seafood industry. China has seven of the world’s ten busiest ports and eighty percent of the world’s trade by volume is carried out by the sea. Due to the spread of coronavirus, these ports came to a halt. Ships can’t get into the ports, the ones that are already there are stuck at the docks and if the ship came from a Chinese port, they are in floating quarantine zones until the crew is cleared of the virus.

The Alaskan seafood industry depends heavily on the ships coming from China, as they move the seafood from Alaska to China for reprocessing, which shipped back to the U.S and other countries. The closing of Chinese ports and processing plants mean the overflowing cold storage situation is arising. That’s the problem at the reprocessing end of the spectrum, due to the virus, people are limited to their homes, they aren’t going out to markets to buy seafood, which is reducing down the consumption. Since seafood industry from other countries can’t export to China, they are sending seafood to the U.S, which is bringing the price down significantly as a whole.

The epidemic didn’t just affect trading from the ships, the operations for Air Cargo have also been affected, no planes are allowed to fly in or out of China, this limits the ability of freight forwarders to accommodate shipments on the planes. This will result in the limited supply of certain products throughout the U.S.

In light of the recent events, it is important for the seafood industry stakeholders to look for ways to mitigate the problem. There is no denying that the epidemic of corona virus has affected the trade and this is the story of every industry that’s consumer based. In this case, one solution is to incorporate the use of business software such as Seafood ERP. Seafood ERP will help the stakeholders of the industry to better manage their resources into mitigating the issue and will help them focus on the key areas and give them a direction. The software is designed to manage the resources in a better and more efficient way. Software like seafood ERP aren’t expensive and can definitely pay for themselves. In times like these, the efficient use of technology can help us reduce the losses and help us to better manage them.