Keith Gordon, Executive General Manager, Operations, Port of Melbourne, writes:
It’s been interesting to observe how COVID-19 has accelerated innovation in certain industries and expedited new ways of working in others, courtesy of necessity and shifting consumer behaviours.
Locked-in Victorian homebuyers, for example, embraced a shift to online auctions this year, allowing the property sector to maintain a satisfactory number of transactions.
Those same people have most likely forgone their winter holidays and instead started ‘nesting’, ordering home-improvement items and workfrom-home technology products that have triggered a seemingly endless cavalcade of delivery trucks that roll down their streets.
It’s these, and a raft of other COVID influenced consumer habits, which have had a considerable impact on shipping movements through major global routes – including in our part of the world.
As a result, larger vessels with 8,000-10,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) on board (up from 4,000-6000 TEU in previous years) are carrying the ever-increasing number of products bound for Australian homes and businesses. The fate of older ships is demolition – typically within ten years.
