Supply chain – The COVID 19 pandemic has certainly had the impact of its influence on the planet. Economic indicators and health have been compromised and all industries are touched inside a way or even some other. One of the industries in which it was clearly visible is the farming as well as food business.
In 2019, the Dutch extension and food niche contributed 6.4 % to the yucky domestic product (CBS, 2020). According to the FoodService Instituut, the foodservice industry in the Netherlands lost € 7.1 billion inside 2020[1]. The hospitality business lost 41.5 % of the turnover of its as show by ProcurementNation, while at the same time supermarkets increased the turnover of theirs with € 1.8 billion.

Disruptions in the food chain have significant effects for the Dutch economy as well as food security as lots of stakeholders are affected. Despite the fact that it was clear to majority of folks that there was a great effect at the tail end of this chain (e.g., hoarding around supermarkets, restaurants closing) as well as at the beginning of the chain (e.g., harvested potatoes not searching for customers), you will find numerous actors inside the source chain for that will the impact is less clear. It is thus vital that you figure out how well the food supply chain as being a whole is prepared to contend with disruptions. Researchers from your Operations Research as well as Logistics Group at Wageningen University as well as from Wageningen Economics Research, led by Professor Sander de Leeuw, studied the influences of the COVID-19 pandemic all over the food resources chain. They based the analysis of theirs on interviews with about thirty Dutch source chain actors.
Need in retail up, contained food service down It’s apparent and widely known that need in the foodservice stations went down as a result of the closure of restaurants, amongst others. In certain instances, sales for vendors of the food service industry therefore fell to about twenty % of the first volume. As a side effect, demand in the list stations went up and remained within a degree of aproximatelly 10 20 % higher than before the problems began.
Products which had to come through abroad had their very own problems. With the shift in need coming from foodservice to retail, the demand for packaging changed dramatically, More tin, glass or plastic was needed for wearing in consumer packaging. As much more of this particular product packaging material concluded up in consumers’ houses as opposed to in restaurants, the cardboard recycling system got disrupted as well, causing shortages.
The shifts in need have had an important effect on production activities. In certain instances, this even meant a complete stop of production (e.g. inside the duck farming business, which emerged to a standstill on account of demand fall out inside the foodservice sector). In other situations, a significant section of the personnel contracted corona (e.g. in the meat processing industry), leading to a closure of equipment.
Supply chain – Distribution pursuits were also affected. The start of the Corona crisis of China caused the flow of sea canisters to slow down fairly soon in 2020. This resulted in transport electrical capacity which is restricted throughout the earliest weeks of the issues, and high costs for container transport as a result. Truck travel experienced various problems. At first, there were uncertainties regarding how transport would be managed for borders, which in the end weren’t as stringent as feared. What was problematic in situations that are most , however, was the availability of motorists.
The reaction to COVID 19 – provide chain resilience The source chain resilience analysis held by Prof. de Colleagues and Leeuw, was used on the overview of the primary things of supply chain resilience:
Using this framework for the assessment of the interview, the findings show that few businesses had been well prepared for the corona crisis and in fact mostly applied responsive methods. The most important source chain lessons were:
Figure 1. 8 best methods for food supply chain resilience
First, the need to design the supply chain for flexibility as well as agility. This seems particularly complicated for smaller sized companies: building resilience into a supply chain takes attention and time in the organization, and smaller organizations usually do not have the potential to accomplish that.
Second, it was observed that much more interest was required on spreading risk and aiming for risk reduction inside the supply chain. For the future, what this means is far more attention has to be given to the manner in which businesses rely on specific countries, customers, and suppliers.
Third, attention is required for explicit prioritization as well as clever rationing strategies in cases where need cannot be met. Explicit prioritization is actually required to continue to meet market expectations but also to increase market shares wherein competitors miss opportunities. This challenge is not new, though it’s additionally been underexposed in this crisis and was frequently not part of preparatory pursuits.
Fourthly, the corona issues shows us that the financial impact of a crisis additionally relies on the manner in which cooperation in the chain is actually set up. It is typically unclear how additional expenses (and benefits) are actually sent out in a chain, if at all.
Lastly, relative to other purposeful departments, the businesses and supply chain capabilities are in the driving accommodate during a crisis. Product development and marketing and advertising activities need to go hand in deep hand with supply chain activities. Regardless of whether the corona pandemic will structurally replace the traditional considerations between creation and logistics on the one hand and advertising on the other hand, the future must explain to.
How is the Dutch meal supply chain coping during the corona crisis?