# Volatile Freight Rates in Maritime Container Industry in Times of Crises
### Overview of the Literature on the Maritime Container Industry during the Pandemic  
This section discusses the cause and effect of the pandemic on the container transport industry that have been presented in previous research. For this purpose, the most recent scientific papers and other publications have been considered. The basic changes in society, which have been causing disruptions in maritime transport profit, have been presented. Remedial measures that have been implemented by companies in order to be resilient to a possible new crisis situation are indicated hereafter. Over the last decade, the maritime industry has been working towards the goal of providing global economies with undisrupted supply chains and enabling their continuous delivery of goods on time to their manufacturers and final consumers [8]. Regarding the importance of maritime transport and its complexities, any disruption in the maritime transport will definitely have an impact on global trade and its progress [4]. The COVID-19 pandemic has, in spite of the high quality supply chains, caused considerable disruptions on the maritime transport market. Those disruptions have been even more intensified due to the fact that, over the last decade, the production of durable goods has become more fragmented and more dependent on the stability of the global supply chain. The rise in demand for durable goods put against the disruptions caused by the pandemic has reflected the vulnerabilities of the current production of this type of goods [2]. The pandemic and the measures for its containment have considerably affected the operations at ports and container terminals. First, there have been congestions in ports, then delivery delays, increase in operational costs, which will eventually influence the rise of the prices of consumer goods [15]. The imbalance on the maritime container market is a common phenomenon occurring when there are oscillations in demand, while the supply remains relatively stable [16]. However, it is said that port and transport networks were not prepared for the rapid transition of demand that has occurred in this pandemic [17]. Namely, in September, October and November of 2020, most ports reported record turnovers, but in the months previous to these spikes, they had been facing huge drops in demand. The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 virus can have a considerably stronger effect than the disruptions companies have been facing so far. The results of the research suggest that it is an unprecedented situation the world has not yet faced [2; 18] and it cannot be compared to any of the crisis events in history. Unlike previous crises that were caused by excessive debt and the insolvency of the financial institutions, this crisis is one of a kind because it is caused by a virus, i.e., the external shock than has nothing to do with the actions performed from inside the economy [19]. Although today most companies follow the practice of continuous development of risk management systems and striving to develop an adequate level of resilience to the changes in their environment [20], nobody could have foreseen the disruptions to the market caused by the COVID-19 virus [21; 22] that was declared a pandemic disease on 11 March 2020 [23]. Working from home and online shopping have placed challenging demands in front of global supply chains [14]. Since most market players were not prepared for such volatile demand, the supply chains faced a lack of transhipment mechanization, drivers and workers at maritime ports. This was followed by port congestions and the time for the ships' rotation was considerably prolonged. This pandemic has shown how vulnerable the supply chains really are. Many companies in Europe and the United States have focused on localization, 3D prints, moving the production sites closer to home and establishing better connections with the supply chains [18]. At the end of 2020, there was a quick recovery in demand for maritime container shipping, but the supply was limited, and the costsincreased.