Recent earnings reports suggest that costs to transport raw materials and finished goods will continue to rise next year.
Rising transportation costs are weighed heavily on food and beverage manufacturers in 2021, impacting prices for both raw materials and finished goods. Most major food players cited the issue in their most recent earnings reports as one of the greatest challenges they encountered over the course of the year.
Mondelez International’s chairman and chief executive officer Dirk Van De Put pointed out in a call this month that there is “a significant gap between demand and supply of trucking capacity and containers in places like US and the UK,” leading to turbulence in its supply chain.
Indeed, some 80,000 drivers are currently needed to alleviate ongoing supply chain issues and offset trucking industry labor loss in the United States, according to the American Trucking Associations.