Since the beginning of 2020, and up to the present, numerous changes in international trade have led to a major transformation in logistics operations and routes, which has had an increasing impact on the prices of all products, including additives, mainly those depending on maritime transport, although the rest have also been affected significantly.

China and the United States, two of the most important countries in terms of imports and exports, experienced a very marked increase in their port operations in the aforementioned period. As a consequence, many of the main ports of both countries saw their operating capacity exceeded, leaving ships anchored with thousands of unused containers, which under normal conditions would have unloaded merchandise and later would have been destined for a new load. The subsequent consequence of this situation was the low availability of free and usable containers for export and import, for which maritime shipping companies proceeded to drastically change their routes to favor those with more commercial flow. To the detriment, many other routes were affected by a lower frequency and higher costs due to a lower transport service offer.

The lower availability of containers and high demand for maritime shipments, among other factors, caused a very marked increase in transport prices, varying from 300% to 400% from Europe to many areas of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, almost reaching 900% from Europe to many locations in the American continent, especially South America.

The increase in the prices of maritime transport has had an impact on all the products depending on it, increasing prices to be able to face these rises in the cost of transport, and in the case of additives it has had an impact of between 30% to 60% price increase, depending on the destination locations or the type of additive.

However, the situation is not much better at the national level in each country, since the internal logistics costs of transport have also increased due to the fluctuation of fuel and energy prices. Therefore, the impact of logistics on additive prices can be considered global.

Given this situation, the animal feed sector, when evaluating additives, must take them into account not only for their effects on disease prevention or for the improvement of specific parameters, but also prioritizing the improvement of conversion rates and efficiency. In this way, when we improve these indices, we will be assessing how many more tons of meat are produced thanks to the use of an additive, while also saving tons of feed consumed. Thus, despite the increase in the price of the additives in the previously mentioned percentages, the use of the additives will continue to be profitable, even more so considering that the costs of selling meat have also increased and the costs of food are the highest in historical records.

At Biovet, we direct all our field evaluations towards a joint assessment of the effect of additives in animal feed, in which, in addition to specific technical parameters, a special focus is made on the study of the increase in tons of meat produced and feed saved with the use of our product lines. In this way, the benefit of customers, which is a priority, is safeguarded from situations such as the logistical change experienced in recent years.