One area of concern to which I omitted reference above is continual container shipping delays. On occasion some ships run a week late, and hence if they were arriving from Asia, instead of typically (say) departing Yantian or Hong Kong, then calling at Sydney, Melbourne then Brisbane in that order may 'skip' Sydney (similar to a train that's suddenly altered to run express to make up time).
This unpunctuality leads to 'blank sailings' where if a shipping line has a once a week frequency, vessels 'drop down the calendar' by a week each, so in one week, there's no vessel calling into Oz.
At other times, import (or, irrelevant to MYR, export) containers ('TEUs') are transferred to a later sailing, delaying stock arrival in Australia.
Container lines have hugely put up costs for transporting a 6.1 metre or larger 12.2 metre container from Asia. One even called a 'peak season surcharge' a way to 'improve the customer experience'.
The Australian ACCC has announced a pointless investigation into rising shipping costs. None of the shipping lines are Australian owned: ANL, for instance, has been foreign owned by France's CMA-CGM since 1998.
Here is an example how shipping lines are continually facing delays at ports (including Sydney and Fremantle, and to some extent Brisbane and the busiest in Australia for containers in Melbourne, which beats Port Botany a little). Industrial action by the Maritime Union of Australia demanding pay rises at 50 per cent owned by QUB Patrick's Ports is not helping:
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