Some empty iPad boxes that make a crazy journey around the world and back are a surreal illustration of the distribution challenges Apple faces during the pandemic.
Apple has historically relied on purchasing cargo capacity on passenger flights to ensure that products arrive in the right country at the right time, but the coronavirus crisis has obviously reduced the air travel industry …
Cargo ships are much slower, but also much less reliable.
The information opens his report with the story of the empty iPad boxes.
Apple’s distribution center in Singapore no longer needs brown mailboxes to achieve an increase in iPad orders from China, stemming from the growing demand for distance learning devices, a person with direct knowledge of Apple’s logistics operations said. While the specially designed iPad mailboxes were originally manufactured in China, the only solution that avoided delays for customers was to fly in a consignment of the boxes that had been sitting unused at a warehouse in the US
Apple put dozens of pallets of flat-packed boxes in a plane to China, after which it was transferred to another plane en route to Singapore, where iPads were stopped so they could be returned to China. (Apple does not have a distribution center in China to process orders from its online store, as most Chinese customers buy Apple products through other retailers.)
But this is not the only unlikely transport route the company has had to use.
At one point, Apple could not get a shipment of HomePod Minis in Vietnam to California after a seafarer canceled the stop at the port of Haiphong near Hanoi. Apple’s logistics team, which had to bring the devices to the US before the November 16 release, therefore decided to transport the speakers by truck about 1,400 kilometers from a factory outside Hanoi to the Chinese port of Shanghai, according to the person with direct knowledge of the consignments.
There, Apple loads the devices into fast container ships, which are more expensive to transport goods than traditional cargo ships, but can drive twice as fast. The smaller ships covered the distance from Shanghai to California within two weeks rather than four. The HomePods arrived in Long Beach, California, in late October, in time for their pre-holiday launch, according to an analysis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection manifestos and the person with direct knowledge of the shipments.
Apple uses a similar approach to AirPods made in Vietnam, although Haiphong port is less than 100 km away from where the devices are manufactured. Instead of waiting for space on a cargo ship that would travel directly to the US, some AirPods were transported about 700 kilometers by truck to the southern Chinese port of Yantian before boarding Long Beach, according to data from the vessel and the person. As of January, Apple continues to use these unorthodox routes to ship HomePod Minis and AirPods from Vietnam.
Apple also had to make much more use of charter aircraft to compensate for the huge decline in scheduled airline flights.
The company is working on a plan to have parcel delivery companies like Fedex act as U.S. distribution centers and keep inventory and ship directly to customers when placing orders with Apple.
Photo by Ameya Khandekar on Unsplash
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