This is Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Vivienne Nunes. Have you ever really

thought about global shipping? Well, if not, you're probably not alone. But on today's program,

we'll be asking why the industry that makes the world's goods go round has found itself amid

stormy seas. With freight costs going through the roof

and coronavirus restrictions ongoing.

We hear from the businesses and the seafarers finding themselves stuck.

I miss my family so much, especially my wife and my daughter.

To be honest, if it continues like this, we just don't see how we can actually carry on trading.

Business Daily from the BBC.

Can you remember ever seeing a container ship?

I've only seen them a couple of times, anchored in ports when I've flown into Singapore or Dubai,

or once when I reported from the port of Mombasa in Kenya.

This is a key gateway for cargo coming in and out of East Africa,

and all around me shipping containers are being picked up and hauled around

by a busy network of cranes, tractors and trucks, each of them containing commodities like steel or wheat or any number of consumer goods.

Being mostly a land lover, I've seen more shipping containers repurposed into shared office space, but the goods I use every day almost certainly

travelled to me over the sea in a cargo ship. But usually container ships in the job they do

are invisible to most of us, just humming along in the background, bringing goods from far away

factories to local stores and warehouses, ready for us to buy. During the pandemic though,

international supply chains have been hugely disrupted. Goods that we expect to be ready

for us whenever we want them are being held up by a shortage of empty containers in Asia and backlogs

in ports from Auckland to LA. The people who work on those ships have also had their lives turned upside down.

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