MOLD BUILDERS FEEL SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS by Liz Stevens, writer, The American Mold Builder
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s 2022 gets underway, mold builders are facing many pressures. An increased demand for products is crashing head-on into the lingering worker shortage and a crippling supply chain crunch. With the current tight material supply and rising prices, logistics madness and a booming market for consumer products, it is no surprise that mold builders have lost sleep wondering how suppliers got into this mess, how mold building is currently being impacted and when the supply chain might return to normal. HOW DID THE SUPPLY CHAIN JAM TRANSPIRE? The supply chain dilemma stems from several factors – some from before the pandemic began. Prices for imported materials already had risen in 2018 due to the previous administration’s trade and tariff policies. Then COVID-19 hit, sending shock waves that resulted in factory slowdowns or shutdowns in China that spread to the US and the rest of the world. The start of the COVID-19 crush affected industry suppliers but not in the ways that the suppliers expected. In the Spring of 2020, suppliers faced an entirely new and unpredictable future; many of them feared that the entire US economy would shut down due to the dramatic “shelter in place” orders issued in many states. Suppliers scrambled to sell what stock they had on hand and then radically scaled back their production. But then, at the start of the summer, suppliers were shocked by the unexpected: consumer demand surged rather than tanked.
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the american MOLD BUILDER | Issue 1 2022
The pandemic caused a surge in demand for medicaloriented products like ventilators, PPE and coronavirus test kits. But the scope of the demand surge was much more widespread than this – nervous citizens began buying up all sorts of household supplies. Then, with the pandemic hobbling activities and travel severely restricted, home-bound Americans began a consumables and home improvement shopping spree that upped traffic along global trade routes. At the start of 2021, when industry suppliers thought that the balance of demand and supply finally had evened out, along came unprecedented winter storms in the US, including a disastrous deep freeze in Texas that crippled petrochemical plants. The still-surging import traffic flow then was hit by a whammy as cargo shipping was upended after the ship Ever Given wedged itself in the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, the US buying spree continued and the incoming goods – on ships finally able to navigate the Canal – began overwhelming US ports, rail transport and trucking, all of which also impacted the import and delivery of materials to manufacturers. As of January 2022, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 began blanketing the nation with skyrocketing contagiousness but milder disease than the Delta variant. And everyone, in every industry, in every nation, was waiting to see what would happen next. THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRY For a look at the current situation and some helpful suggestions, The American Mold Builder talked to
