Chip production is going to be a choking point not just from COVID-related challenges but from AKM’s massive three-day fire at its Nobeoka City, Japan semiconductor factory. The severe recent storms in Texas caused widespread power outages, and halted chip production for Samsung, Infineon, and NXP in Austin, Texas, amid an already constrained global chip supply. The intense snow storm in Texas, which brought loss of water and electricity, has added to the mess, with Samsung’s Austin-based foundry line forced to partially suspend operations in mid-February. Same with NXP Semiconductors and Infineon Technologies, which also suspended fab operations there - and these vendors provide 10% of total US capacity.

That catastrophe was soon followed by an earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan. Renesas Electronics’ chip plant off the coast of Fukushima, Japan was hit with a 7.1 magnitude earthquake mid-February, halting wafer processing for a week with gradual ramp-up to full operation. Then, last week Renesas said it will take at least a month to resume production at its Naka plant in northeast Japan after an electrical fault caused machinery to catch fire and poured smoke into the sensitive clean room. While mostly providing chips for the automotive market, Renesas acquired Intersil in 2016 and customers include both power stuff and automotive infotainment devices.

While losing containers at sea in harsh weather is relatively rare, incidents this winter have been on the rise, especially in the Pacific Ocean. As ships become bigger and containers are stacked as high as multi-story buildings, vessel stability may come under greater pressure from pitching and rolling. For a half dozen audio brands, there will be shortages in finished product due to the unprecedented storms in the Pacific. On December 31, a container ship managed by Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp., Ltd. lost around 40 containers off the coast of Japan while heading across the Pacific. The One Apus container vessel, operated by Singapore-based Ocean Network Express, lost around 2,000 boxes in November when it hit a storm off Hawaii on its way to Long Beach, CA, from Yantian, China. The ship eventually sailed to Kobe, Japan, with hundreds of tipped-over containers sitting precariously onboard and it remains there for repairs and an investigation into the cause of the incident. On January 16, Maersk, a major shipping line, lost 750 containers in rough seas from its Essen container ship about halfway through its trans-Pacific journey, sailing from China’s Port of Xiamen to Los Angeles, CA. And already in February, 76 containers fell off a vessel operated by ZIM in route from South Korea to North America.

These incidents this season have resulted in nearly 3,000 containers lost overboard and now resting at the bottom of the sea. Keep in mind the standard container interior is 40’ x 8’ x 8.6’. Just to make matters worse, insurance on container ships is not so common. Not to bore you with more incidents, let’s just say that so far this year more than double the containers (and of course their contents!) have been lost compared to all of 2020.

Just to finish off on a high note (sorry for the New Yorker sarcasm) last week a massive container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal. So what? Well, it blocked one of the world's busiest shipping lanes causing delays for at least 400 other container ships. The canal is a more direct shipping route between Asia and Europe. As tug boats and dredgers struggled to free the gigantic ship - and the Internet joked about it - this caused hundreds of container ships to wait at each end of the canal.

The ship snagged in the Suez canal has now been dislodged, and production at the Samsung Electronics' chip plant in Austin, TX, has returned to almost normal operation, following disruptions that are expected to cause shortages in smartphone production over the next few months. I wanted to add some last minute additional good news, but it’s April Fools’ Day and no one would believe me.

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