The Covid 19 pandemic – challenges for maritime transport and global logistics supply chains

The outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic and the actions that all countries took in its aftermath all over the world in the first quarter of 2020 and later, i.e., during lockdowns and other restrictive measures, introducing a short and medium-term freezing of economic activity, had a strong impact on their economies and, consequently, also on the global economy. They hit seriously its particularly sensitive sectors, such as industry, trade and transport. The aim of undertaken research is to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the functioning of maritime transport sector as well as to indicate its consequences for the global supply chains between 2020 and 2021 (first quarter). The research is mainly focused on assessing the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on the global shipping and especially container one that is contemporarily the most vital link of the global intermodal land-sea supply chains. The analyses take into account the adaptive measures taken by ship operators and other individual parties being an integral link of the global supply chains with an aim to mitigate the effects of radical slowdown in industrial and global trade activity. The research was based on the analyses, reports and several business information carried out by specialized international organizations as well as ship carriers and logistics providers. The obtained research results indicate the need to reconfigure global logistics supply chains and increase their resilience by introducing new digital solutions. It is high time to introduce new smart, green digital supply chains and subsequently to reconfigure them much more towards the regional trade and economic relations and ties among countries (reshoring). Such activities aiming at rebuilding the logistic supply chains may at the same time change the presently existing business environment in global maritime shipping, enforcing not only changes in ship owners’ business models but also serious structural alterations on the shipping freight markets.