Supply chain – The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly had its impact impact on the planet. health and Economic indicators have been affected and all industries have been completely touched within one way or another. One of the industries in which this was clearly apparent would be the agriculture and food business.
In 2019, the Dutch agriculture as well as food industry contributed 6.4 % to the disgusting domestic item (CBS, 2020). According to the FoodService Instituut, the foodservice industry in the Netherlands lost € 7.1 billion inside 2020[1]. The hospitality business lost 41.5 % of the turnover of its as show by ProcurementNation, while at exactly the same time supermarkets increased their turnover with € 1.8 billion.
Disruptions of the food chain have significant consequences for the Dutch economy and food security as many stakeholders are impacted. Even though it was apparent to many men and women that there was a huge effect at the conclusion of this chain (e.g., hoarding around food markets, eateries closing) as well as at the start of the chain (e.g., harvested potatoes not finding customers), there are a lot of actors in the supply chain for that will the impact is less clear. It is thus vital that you find out how well the food supply chain as being a whole is actually equipped to cope with disruptions. Researchers in the Operations Research as well as Logistics Group at Wageningen Faculty as well as out of Wageningen Economics Research, led by Professor Sander de Leeuw, studied the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic all over the food supply chain. They based the analysis of theirs on interviews with about thirty Dutch supply chain actors.
Need within retail up, that is found food service down It is apparent and well known that need in the foodservice channels went down as a result of the closure of places, amongst others. In a few instances, sales for vendors of the food service industry thus fell to aproximatelly 20 % of the initial volume. Being a complication, demand in the retail stations went up and remained within a degree of aproximatelly 10-20 % greater than before the problems started.
Products that had to come from abroad had their own problems. With the shift in demand coming from foodservice to retail, the demand for packaging improved considerably, More tin, cup or plastic was required for wearing in consumer packaging. As more of this product packaging material ended up in consumers’ homes rather than in joints, the cardboard recycling system got disrupted too, causing shortages.
The shifts in desire have had a significant effect on output activities. In certain cases, this even meant a full stop of production (e.g. inside the duck farming business, which came to a standstill on account of demand fall out inside the foodservice sector). In other instances, a major portion of the personnel contracted corona (e.g. to the meat processing industry), leading to a closure of facilities.
Supply chain – Distribution activities were also affected. The start of the Corona crisis of China triggered the flow of sea bins to slow down pretty shortly in 2020. This resulted in transport capacity which is restricted throughout the very first weeks of the crisis, and high costs for container transport as a result. Truck transportation experienced different problems. At first, there were uncertainties regarding how transport would be managed at borders, which in the long run were not as rigid as feared. The thing that was problematic in situations that are many , nonetheless, was the accessibility of drivers.
The response to COVID-19 – supply chain resilience The supply chain resilience analysis held by Prof. de Leeuw as well as Colleagues, was used on the overview of the primary things of supply chain resilience:
To us this particular framework for the assessment of the interviews, the conclusions show that few businesses had been nicely prepared for the corona crisis and in reality mainly applied responsive methods. Probably the most important source chain lessons were:
Figure 1. Eight best practices for meals supply chain resilience
First, the need to create the supply chain for agility and flexibility. This appears especially challenging for smaller sized companies: building resilience right into a supply chain takes time and attention in the organization, and smaller organizations oftentimes don’t have the capacity to do so.
Next, it was found that more interest was necessary on spreading danger and also aiming for risk reduction inside the supply chain. For the future, meaning more attention should be given to the manner in which businesses depend on suppliers, customers, and specific countries.
Third, attention is needed for explicit prioritization as well as smart rationing techniques in cases in which need cannot be met. Explicit prioritization is necessary to keep on to satisfy market expectations but additionally to improve market shares in which competitors miss options. This challenge is not new, however, it has in addition been underexposed in this problems and was often not part of preparatory activities.
Fourthly, the corona problems shows us that the economic result of a crisis additionally relies on the manner in which cooperation in the chain is set up. It’s usually unclear how further costs (and benefits) are actually sent out in a chain, if at all.
Finally, relative to other functional departments, the operations and supply chain functions are actually in the driving accommodate during a crisis. Product development and advertising activities need to go hand deeply in hand with supply chain pursuits. Whether or not the corona pandemic will structurally replace the classic considerations between generation and logistics on the one hand as well as advertising and marketing on the other hand, the long term will have to explain to.
How is the Dutch foods supply chain coping during the corona crisis?
