BEING ON A WAR FOOTING

摘要

Although protests from stevedores did occur to the COVID-19 pandemic over safety issues/lack of personal safety equipment, it did not disrupt the cargo flows for very long. Neither did the threats of strikes in Santos, the key port in South America with 4.17 million TEU handled last year (up 1 per cent over the 3.87 million TEU for 2018, according to statistics from the Santos Port Authority) or at any smaller ports. In fact, not only have all Brazil’s leading container ports – all 23 of them out of 35 ports in total – remained open during the crisis to date, but container volumes have actually risen, significantly at many of them. This is due to increased demand for Brazilian foodstuffs from around the world, especially from China, where the virus originated.