Business Updates

Flooding in North and North West QLD

Torrential rain across North and North West Queensland has caused significant flooding throughout the region. This has resulted in a number of road closures leaving many areas currently inaccessible for deliveries.

At this stage we are unable to access the following areas:

• Cairns
• Innisfail
• Mount Isa
• Cloncurry
• Charter Towers

The rain is expected to continue south today which may cause issues with accessing Mackay, Cannonvale and Bowen.

Shanghai Lockdown

• Chinese authorities have extended their lockdown of Shanghai to cover all its 25 million people after a fresh surge in Covid cases.
• 222 Bulkers (vessels carrying Raw Materials) were waiting to get into Shanghai Port on 11 April
• Congestion expanded to Ningbo-Zhousan, as shipping is diverted to other Ports in China to avoid trucker shortages and Warehouse closures in Shanghai
• 197 Container ships are either loading or waiting to load in Shanghai and Ningbo.  Port worker shortages are resulting in delays in processing documents required to unload ships
• Trucking remains a huge problem because other Chinese cities won’t grant access to those from Shanghai until the drivers produce a negative Covid test. 
• It is estimated that a total of 23 Chinese cities have implemented either full or partial lockdowns, which collectively are home to an estimated 193m people and contribute to 22% of China’s GDP.
• Guangzhou has become the latest port city to undergo mass Covid-testing, a frequent precursor to tough restrictions under China’s zero-Covid policy. City-wide testing began on Saturday evening, along with travel restrictions on who can leave and enter the city.
• Shenzhen and Hong Kong have been battling their own on-and-off Covid testing and restrictions for months, disrupting normal manufacturing and trade levels.

Flooding in Northern New South Wales

Recent torrential rain has again caused flooding throughout Northern NSW, particularly around the areas of Lismore, Byron and Ballina. Deliveries in and around the region have been impacted. The Pacific Highway from Wardell to Tintenbar (near Ballina) has also been closed which is having an impacting on deliveries into Northern NSW.

Service Disruption - Flooding- East-West Corridor (Rail)

Severe erosion and damage caused by heavy rainfall has resulted in the closure of the rail line in and out of Western Australia. With freight currently unable to move via rail, increased pressure has been placed on the road network resulting in heavy congestion, decreased vehicle availability and lead time delays. 

Urgent repair works are currently underway on the rail lines however due to the severity of the damage, the estimated timeframe for rail restoration is currently 10-12 days. Once the rail lines are reopened delays are likely to be felt into the coming weeks as the backlog of freight is cleared.

Melbourne Warehouse

We wanted to keep you informed that our Melbourne Warehouse is currently enduring delays due to Covid related restrictions. As a result, the Warehouse has a backlog of dispatching orders, of up to 4 days. They are working on various solutions to get all of the orders out, where they anticipate that they will be caught up by the end of the week. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate through these unprecedented times. Please note that these delays affect the Melbourne Warehouse only.

Will Call Update

In light of the ever-evolving Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, we’ve been closely monitoring this in real-time based on the advice of the World Health Organisation and Australia’s Chief Medical Officer and reviewing our approach regularly.

With this in mind, we have implemented some further precautionary measures, these include;

• Will Call will be unavailable for collecting your order. This means you will still be able order your product from the warehouse and collect shipping points.
• Member Services will be available via phone, chat and email to respond to any queries you have. Please follow this link for our AUS Member Services contact information.

It goes without saying that we remain absolutely committed to doing everything we can to put the health and safety of our doTERRA community first. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to our Member Services team.

In an effort to keep our community updated, we have included below, some of the issues that have come to our attention. Due to the extent of this problem, we expect ongoing disruption to your deliveries and anticipate delays will not be resolved in the short term. 

For this reason, we are currently investigating how to better supply you with updates and access to the information you’ll need to keep yourself and your communities informed over the coming months. 
 

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 28 February 2022

Australia

• Torrential rain across South East QLD and Northern NSW has caused significant flooding throughout the region. This has resulted in a number of road closures leaving many areas currently inaccessible for deliveries.
• Heavy rain and flooding are disrupting services in impacted areas of Queensland.
• Caboolture, Gympie, Maryborough, Toowoomba & Rockhampton significantly impacted with road closures preventing access.
• Greater Brisbane metro impacted by flooding throughout, with additional impacts through Ipswich area and other parts of South East Queensland.
• This may disrupt our ability to deliver to merchants and consumers, and to make collections.
• We are making every effort to support customers where it is safe to do so.
• Our transport and deliveries teams are continually assessing flood impacts and we will make every effort to deliver and collect where it is safe to do so.
• Several Post Offices will also be closed across the state due to flooding and road closures (see list below).
• We will continue to provide updates on impacts and management as we work through the situation over the coming days.
• The safety of our people and customers remains our highest priority. Thank you for your support and understanding.
   

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 3 February 2022

• Covid Restrictions continues to create delays across Global and Domestic Supply Chains. 
• Shipping rates from Australia from Europe is under pressure due to direct ships to Australia are full and transhipment services remain limited due to the heavy congestion at the transshipment hubs.
• Southeast Asian rates(any shipments from China) are also increasing with full ships and a heavily disrupted schedule limiting the ability of ships to complete their voyage in Australia and return. 
• Rail to WA Suspended due to heavy rains. It is believed that the rail line will be closed for at least another 12 days
• 2021 saw the average Ocean shipment delays increase to between 7 and 8 days(which we will see in Q1 and Q2 of 2022) , compared to 5 to 6 days in 2020.  
• Ocean Schedule reliability is less than 45%.  
   

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 13 January 2022

Australia

COVID Impacting Deliveries 

We will see the impact of Isolation requirements on delivery of services. Shortages of truck drivers having the most manifest impact. It is also impacting container terminals, airports and unpack depots; in fact any and every sector. This will undoubtedly slow delivery into our warehouses.
 

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 5 January 2022

• DP World Melbourne are facing delays due to late arriving vessels from Sydney due to recent Sydney weather and Christmas and New Year Holiday Break.  (DP World's Melbourne terminal is located in the Port of Melbourne, Australasia’s largest maritime hub for containerised, automotive, and general cargo)
• Due to increased COVID testing terminals are facing labour shortages which is impacting vessel operations.
• Patrick Melbourne is facing severe congestion and delays due to vessel bunching and general go slow by labour resulting in 10 -12 days of delays and Christmas Holiday & New year Break.
• Average delays at VICT now approximately 5 days.
• Covid testing and surging positive cases are putting immense pressure on labour procurement and additional delays are now being experienced.

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 8 December 2021

• Global Shortage of urea. This could inadvertently force many of Australia’s trucks off the road, as urea is injected into the exhaust systems of modern diesel vehicles to reduce emissions.

• Long Beach and Los Angeles Port have 96 ships waiting offshore, there were 31 ships at container terminals bringing the grand total of ships up to 127 – an all time record

• Qantas has announced that it will convert two Airbus A330-200 medium widebody passenger aircraft into pure freighters to support growing cargo volumes. 
  
  

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 1 December 2021

Australia

• Industrial Action at Melbourne Port continues to play further havoc with Vessel Schedules.
• Vessel delays between 1 – 4 days and 6-13 days for vessels that are already delayed on off the berthing window due to COVID cases.
• Patrick continues to work with reduced labour availability due to COVID isolation requirements for close contacts.

New Zealand

• In Auckland, restrictions are now at under Alert level 3 – step 2. The rest of New Zealand is at alert level 2.
• Additional cleaning is being imposed after every shift change. This hampers the ability of the port to maximize vessel.
   

NZ AIRFREIGHT - Current 24 November 2021

Forwarders in New Zealand are dealing with the “worst-ever” peak season for air cargo capacity

Strict Covid policies have seen the country’s borders closed to nearly all travellers since March 2020, with the lack of a re-opening plan exasperating the aviation industry. 

 “New Zealand continues to lose vital air links ,due to the uncertainty over the border, putting more pressure on our supply chain”
 

LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 22 November 2021

Heavy Backlog at Major US Airports

Some major airports across the US are facing heavy backlogs and ground handling delays. The situation is critical due to lack of ground handling warehouse space, operations personnel resources and the limitation of cargo screening mostly conducted using the canine handling method. Please see below list of current ground handling delays:

• New York JFK: Approximately 4 weeks delay.
• Los Angeles LAX: Approximately 1 week delay.
• Atlanta/Dallas ATL/DFW: 2 - 5 days delay.
• Chicago and Miami ORD/MIA: No current delays.
   

GLOBAL LOGISTICS UPDATE - Current 27 October 2021

Melbourne Port

• Covid cases are increasing in Melbourne putting pressure on terminal labour procurement at all terminals .
• Tug Strike action on October 28th at Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Airfreight

• With Borders Opening on 01 Nov, the return of Passenger Aircraft will increase airfreight capacity which will improve airfreight  availability, timeliness and eventually price.

Los Angeles / Long Beach congestion update

• Ships waiting offshore dipping to the high 50’s; this has now increased to over 100 ships, either at anchor or alongside, containing over 500,000 TEU, or an estimated US$22 billion worth of cargo.  There are simply too many vessels arriving with too much cargo for terminals, trucks, trains, and warehouses to handle
• The current wait or dwell time for a ship to wait at anchor is at an all time high of 13 days, up 65% from the beginning of September.

SUMMARY OF OCEAN FREIGHT INTO MELBOURNE & AUCKLAND - Current 20 October, 2021

Melbourne Port

• VICT( Victoria International Container Terminal) have been hit with fresh COVID cases which have impacted operations and large delays and slow operation ongoing
• Patrick terminal Melbourne have also had Covid case related delays

New Zealand

• Services ex Port of Tauranga to Metroport Auckland are still extremely congested. As more liner operators choose to alter vessel rotations / schedules, inevitably berthing slots are missed and affected vessels are queued waiting for the next available slot. At any given time, there are upwards of 10 -15 vessels at anchor waiting to work alongside the terminal with a constant stream of containers needing to be railed to Auckland Metroport
• Currently priority containers are taking approximately 3 - 4 days and general bookings 10 – 14 days (to clear)

Australia/NZ
No improvements on the Tasman with continued vessel delays and frequent port cancellations or changes in rotation. The effect of this being continued congestion and shortages of equipment and space while cargo is rolled to the following service. All carriers are advising limited space available from Australia to NZ, and export services back to Australia are also under severe pressure. Rates are still trending higher while space remains at a premium, we are not expecting this situation to improve until 2022.
 

SUMMARY INTERNATIONAL FREIGHT ISSUES – Current 5 October 2021

• Ports throughout Asia and the US remain heavily congested. Presently, trans-shipment hubs are facing 3-4 week delays. Port congestion is unlikely to ease until February/March 2022.
• Limited space on aircraft is impacting freight availability, with an associated spike in pricing.
• Both American Airlines and Qantas have cancelled their daily service to Australia. This is also impacting capacity and cost. Daily flights are due to resume this November.  
• Carrier reliability is down 30.1% from August 2020 to August 2021. The average delay for vessel arrivals also continues to deteriorate, increasing by 0.58 days month on month to 7.57 days in August, 2021. 
• The Chinese Government has imposed power cuts on at least 10 Chinese provinces. This will impact  China’s busiest Ports including Jiangsu, Guangdong and Zhejiang. Any drop shipments from China will be impacted.

SUMMARY OF OUR DOMESTIC FREIGHT ISSUES – Current 5 October, 2021

• Covid-19 has recently hit terminals across Sydney and Melbourne, with the Victorian ocean freight terminal only resuming operations on the 25th of September after four staff were infected.  
• Port strikes across the country, threaten to cripple imports and put further strain on supply chains in the middle of state lockdowns. The Maritime Union of Australia has escalated already damaging industrial action notifying wharf workers will strike every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in Melbourne for the whole of October. The strike will disrupt Melbourne and Sydney ports already experiencing unpredictable shutdowns caused by coronavirus.   
• To ease stress on the system to a safe and manageable level, Australia Post has once again paused pick-ups from retailers from Friday 01 October to Wednesday 06 October.  This will create further backlogs in shipments. 

SUMMARY OF ISSUES FACING OUR doTERRA WAREHOUSES – Current 5 October, 2021

doTERRA Australia Warehouse

• Our Melbourne warehouse has been working under COVID-19 restrictions and has therefore been under resourced for as long as Melbourne has been in lockdown.
• The recent pause in Australia Post pick-ups from Friday 01 October to Wednesday 06 October will create further backlogs for those waiting to get their orders out of our Melbourne warehouse. 

doTERRA New Zealand Warehouse

• Our New Zealand warehouse is still struggling with resourcing due to COVID-19 restrictions.
• New Zealand Post has reported a significant increase in parcels in and out of Auckland. This, combined with COVID-19 operating restrictions will result in up to 5 working days’ delay.