Shipping-Hanjin Pt 2

Shipping-Hanjin Pt 2

Susan Allen
Susan Allen
I'm Bob Larson. The Oregon grass seed company, we told you about yesterday, had to get creative to fulfill a major order that was being held hostage in the bankruptcy filing by shipping giant Hanjin.

Pure Seed GM, Lucas Solis says when Hanjin gave them word their shipment was stuck in South Korea, it was just dropped in their lap...

LUCAS SOLIS 3B = 16 sec ... "And then that was it! There wasn't any well ya know, we have this vessel lined up or we're gonna get you a new booking. It was pretty much hey listen, 'difficult situation, we're gonna off-load the ship and it's going to be in port until you are able to arrange another booking out of Busan to the final destination'."

Solis says the next few weeks were frantic ...

LUCAS SOLIS 5 = 26 sec ... "We had specific target dates that we had to hit and we spent a good two-and-a-half, three weeks scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. It was just day after day after day with no plan, with no clear path forward. So that led to us getting incredibly nervous and our clients getting incredibly nervous, and us basically having to take the decision to go ahead and schedule a significant amount of seed to be air-frieghted to the market."

Pure Seed wound up shipping 88,000 pounds of ryegrass seed to the United Arab Emerits by air at an additional cost of over $60,000.

Solis expects things to even out over time, but in the short term, he says Hanjin's bankruptcy could potentially push freight rates to Asia 50-to-100 percent higher.

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