Target News

Transport Disruptions in the Red Sea and Suez Canal

There are significant disruptions to products being transported from the Far East but Target customers need not worry, certainly not yet.

Continued reports of vessels being attacked in the Red Sea and Suez Canal on their way from the Far East to the rest of the World have meant that several shipping companies have rerouted container ships around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding thousands of miles to routes and, as expected, delays to products being transported to their destinations.

This will likely result in increased carriage costs for any products transported via that route, as well as delays in actually receiving them into ports. However, we are in constant contact with shipping companies who are monitoring the situation.

The good news is we do not currently have any stock issues, the Target warehouse looks healthily stocked and we are, at the minute, only experiencing a few minor delays.

In order to avoid out-of-stocks wherever possible, we are working with all our partners to source products from Europe and other territories that are not reliant on transporting via the affected area.

Whilst we hope that the multi-national security initiative Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) will reduce the risks associated with the Red Sea/ Suez Canal route, for those products we cannot source elsewhere, if carriage, container and associated costs do increase, we will mitigate them as much as we can but some price rises may be unavoidable. However, as always, we will work to be as competitive as possible.

We will continue to monitor the situation and update our customers as appropriate. If you have any queries or concerns, please do get in touch.