Warehouses in and around U.S. ports are running out of room, experts say, adding another challenge to the country’s already crippled supply chain.
“We are either at or over capacity, and demand for space is the greatest I have ever seen,” said Michael Sarcona, president of Sarcona Management Inc. He operates several warehouses in the Newark area, the third-largest port in North America.
Hundreds of thousands of shipping containers faced record backlog at U.S. ports over the past several weeks. Now that some have made landfall, the goods stored in those containers may soon outpace warehouse capacity.
Warehouse vacancy in the country has reached 3.6%, a record low, according to recent data from CBRE, an American commercial real estate services and investment firm.
“Three-and-a-half percent is effectively zero,” said John Morris, executive managing director lead for CBRE’s industrial and logistics business in the Americas. “For the year, we have basically an effective shortage of space of about 300 million square feet.”
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