Page 18 - Sphere No.15 (Nov 2005)

C O V E R S T O R Y
HOPPING IS WIDELY REPORTED to be
the world’s number one leisure activity.
We all do it. And increasingly we’re buying
goods sourced from every corner of the
earth. In an era of globalisation the things
we buy may have been transported thou-
sands of miles before we ever see them.
We all shop. But we rarely stop to think about how our pur-
chases reach the store. We take for granted all the logistical
effort that goes into moving goods from the place of manufac-
ture to the point of sale. Until there’s a problem, that is.
Recent events have shown how easily the global supply chain
can be disrupted. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it
knocked out one of the largest ports in the US and made a
huge hole in the country’s ability to import the goods it needs.
Just to take one example, all the Starbucks coffee drunk in
America enters the country through New Orleans. So if the
port is out of action, the coffee en route for the US has to be
redirected and landed elsewhere – or consumers will have to go
without their lattes and espressos.
It’s not just natural disasters that can affect shipping.
International trade disputes can also hold up cargoes. Until
China and the European Union reached agreement on quotas
in September, shipments of Chinese textile products were
stacked up, unable to gain access to European ports – leaving
consumers unable to buy the clothes they wanted.
Delivering the goods – how HPH supports the global supply chain
By Andrew Ashley
S PHERE 16
s
Thinking
out of the box