KUALA LUMPUR (March 27): The collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge and the suspension of operations at the Baltimore port's private and public terminals after a 948-foot container ship smashed into the four-lane bridge are set to affect courier services as it would now take a longer time to reach from one side to the other, said express carrier GDEX Bhd managing director and group chief executive officer Teong Teck Lean.

In a text reply to The Edge from Jakarta on Wednesday in the aftermath of the incident, Teong said the most affected problems regarding logistics with the collapsed bridge will be container ships heading to Baltimore port.

He said they will either be waiting for the port to be operational again or for those containers to be diverted to other ports in the US.

“I think at the moment the total capacity of the ports should be able to handle those that are handled by Baltimore port as a contingency plan.

“The courier material that depends on container ships will be affected and will have to use airfreight, which will cost more but [be] faster in [terms of] services,” he said.

However, Teong opined that the Baltimore problem would not be as serious as the Red Sea crisis, as there are ways to speed up ship access to Baltimore port rather quickly compared to the Red Sea problems, which are more difficult due to war.

“The problem [with] the Red Sea and Baltimore is added costs and delay in logistics costs for shipping containers via that route.

“It will bring up logistics costs overall, and for couriers, we have to plan how to manage costs even more efficiently,” he said.

Teong said one of the ways to contain costs is to improve efficiency even more by deploying more artificial intelligence to speed up the process and, at the same time, reduce labour.

“It will also result in better customer experience.

“Also, we are able to handle logistics solutions rather than pure-play couriers to increase efficiency in human resources,” he said.

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