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Some empty iPad boxes taking a mad trip halfway around the world and back is a surreal illustration of the distribution challenges Apple faces during the pandemic.
Apple has historically relied on purchasing cargo capacity on passenger flights to make sure products get to the right country at the right time, but the coronavirus crisis has of course decimated the airline industry. ..
Freighters are much slower, but also much less reliable.
Information opens his report with the story of empty iPad boxes.
Apple’s fulfillment center in Singapore ran out of the brown PO boxes needed to meet an increase in iPad orders in China, due to increased demand for distance learning devices, a person with a first-hand knowledge of Apple’s logistics operations. While specially-designed iPad mailboxes were originally made in China, the only solution that avoided delays for customers was to steal from a shipment boxes that were left unused in a warehouse in the United States.
Apple put dozens of pallets of flat-packed boxes on a plane to China, after which they were transferred to another plane to Singapore, where iPads were crammed there so they could be shipped back to Singapore. China. (Apple does not have a fulfillment center in China to handle orders for its online store, as most Chinese customers purchase Apple products through other retailers.)
But these are not the only unlikely transport routes the company has had to take.
At one point, Apple was unable to secure a shipment of Vietnam-made HomePod Minis to California after an ocean-going freighter canceled its stop at Haiphong Port near Hanoi. Apple’s logistics team, which was due to ship the devices to the United States before the November 16 release date, decided to truck the speakers around 1,400 miles from a factory outside Hanoi to the port. Chinese from Shanghai, according to the person with direct knowledge of the shipments.
There, Apple loaded the devices into express container ships, which are more expensive to transport goods than traditional freighters, but can travel twice as fast. The smaller ships sailed the distance from Shanghai to California in two weeks instead of four. The HomePods arrived in Long Beach, Calif., In late October and on time for their pre-holiday launch, according to an analysis of data from the US Customs and Border Protection’s ship manifesto and the person with direct knowledge of the expeditions.
Apple has used a similar approach for AirPods made in Vietnam, even though the port of Haiphong is less than 160 km from where the devices are made. Rather than wait for space on a container ship that would go directly to the United States, some AirPods were transported approximately 700 miles by truck to the port of Yantian in southern China before d ” board ships bound for Long Beach, according to ship manifest data and person. Back in January, Apple was still using these unorthodox routes to ship HomePod Minis and AirPods from Vietnam.
Apple also had to use chartered planes a lot more to offset the huge drop in airline scheduled flights.
The company is working on a plan for parcel delivery companies like Fedex to act as U.S. fulfillment centers, hold inventory, and ship it directly to customers when orders are placed with Apple.
Photo by Ameya Khandekar on Unsplash
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