Page 36 - Food&Drink Business magazine June 2022

SUPPLY CHAIN & LOGISTICS
The long road west
The domestic supply chain headache triggered by Covid and exacerbated by various climate events affected the whole nation. West Australian state director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia,
Brian Lynn, reflects on the specific issues encountered by the state.
AS challenges go the last three years have been the equivalent of the Ninja Warrior Australia course for Western Australian supply chain partners.
Overlaid on the backdrop of Covid and Western Australia’s (necessary but painful) border restrictions was the ‘Warped Wall’ of the early 2022 Trans- Australia rail line washout and the catastrophic war in Ukraine.
Even in the early rounds of the contest, supply chain went from being a term only mentioned in industry circles to a position of prominence in the mainstream press. Lockdowns announced with minimal notice threw the public into a tailspin of panic buying of the most unlikely products (toilet roll, bleach, cat food, and staples such as pasta and rice).
As local reserves were quickly exhausted, shoppers began to release their reliance on eastern state supplies, and the fragility of the air, rail, and road connections with these
resources. (80 per cent of Western Australia’s supermarket goods reportedly come from ‘over east’).
The difficulties experienced by supply chain systems reacting to massive unpredictable surges of demand became all too apparent. Retailers battled to secure alternative sources of supply and to restrict demand by
consumer goods, the protected nature of the Western Australian industry and its previous reliance on overseas and interstate workers, employees were at a premium. It meant they could therefore negotiate higher salaries and be pickier about the roles that they were prepared to undertake.
Tourism and hospitality were caught between the pincers of
booming for camping and caravanning gear, four-wheel drives, and all the accessories.
In turn, the increased demand for local food products was greatly constrained by the lack of transient labour to harvest and package produce due to hard border restrictions.
Border and travel restrictions meant that flights to and from the west became uneconomic for most operators, with the spin off effect severely limiting the capacity for piggy-back air freight movements.
The supply chain industry had to become creative.
The big supermarkets
combatted rail issues by chartering container ships
and moving goods from east
to west by water. Then, of course, the ports became log jammed, and by the time goods started to flow smoothly, the rail line had reopened.
When the Western Australian borders reopened in March 2022, the next challenge was
36 | Food&Drink business | June 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
“ Without doubt, given how the last two years have shown its critical role in daily life, supply chain management must be given more weight as a critical discipline.”
imposing buying limits on the most sought-after items.
Consumers started noticing that they couldn’t be brand fussy when shopping. They had to make do with what was there or use an alternative (often) locally sourced product.
In contrast to the scarcity of
increased local demand (due to the almost total restriction on overseas and interstate travel); constraints of supply caused by social distancing (and therefore venue capacity limiting); and a huge decrease in the availability of labour.
Meanwhile, demand was