供应链中断：这如何影响价格和产品可用性？
Over the last 18 months, the market has been extremely volatile, requiring you to deal with unprecedented challenges, including successive price increases, ongoing product shortages, supply issues, and other disruptions.
因此，您可能正在处理产品组合和/或预算的更改。
To help you better understand why the market has been so volatile, we’ll cover the factors causing supply issues and driving cost increases, and how this has affected the product lines that may be of interest to you.
供应链破坏者和影响价格变化的因素
COVID-19
Perhaps one of the greatest strains on our supply chain has been due to the impact of COVID-19.
While many have been vaccinated against COVID-19, and the economy is beginning to reopen, the virus remains a threat. The disruption to supply chains across the world continues to be severe and will likely have lasting effects.
You may not think that a public health crisis is directly linked to the global supply chain, but it has impacted every area of operation, including manufacturing, transportation, and more.
We’ll review how this is increasing prices, disrupting product availability, and ultimately impacting you below.
Rising Freight Costs
High transportation costs are the result of several factors:
- Increased Fuel and Oil Prices
- Driver Shortages
- Ocean Freight Container Shortage/Imbalance
- Increases in B2C Shipping Demand
Increased Fuel and Oil Prices
Average diesel fuel prices have been rising steadily sinceNovember 2020.
2020年初，冠状病毒大流行导致经济关闭。石油和燃料需求下降了，因为全球旅行和货运运输在某些情况下甚至停止了。
In response, oil producers curbed their output.
随着越来越多的人接种疫苗，人们重返工作岗位和旅行，对燃料的需求也在增加。但是，石油提供商再次增加石油产量，限制产出并增加价格。
除了冠状病毒大流行的持久结果外，2021年2月的寒冷天气事件引起了墨西哥湾沿岸的炼油厂关闭,进一步抑制production.
Driver Shortages
进一步增加的货运成本是缺乏卡车司机。在过去的15年中，卡车运输行业一直在努力吸引驾驶员。
The美国货运协会（ATA）估计在2018年，有估计60,800 drivers需要。COVID-19大流行只会加剧这种短缺。由于缺乏驱动因素，由于流行病而满足高需求更具挑战性。
ATA预计驾驶员短缺将继续，随着需求将继续超过驾驶员的供应，进一步提高了货运成本。
海运容器短缺/不平衡
Transportation costs have also skyrocketed due to the shortage of ocean freight containers.
TheCOVID-19大流行导致世界各地的工厂关闭，减慢进出口。随着贸易的下降，许多海洋货运容器在港口或任何地方都保持静止，在贸易容器中造成不平衡或短缺。
Given the imbalance, companies must either wait extended periods of time to secure ocean freight containers or pay premium rates to get them.
The problem is driving up shipping costs and delaying goods purchased from overseas, especially Asia, China, and Europe.
Increases in B2C Shipping Demand
COVID-19大流行的结果之一是在线购物和直接面向消费者的运输量增加，这给美国带来了巨大的压力和包裹的运输能力。
As a result,所有送货服务are struggling to keep up with surging delivery demand.
Labor Shortages
As touched on earlier, driver shortages are increasing freight costs. However, labor shortages are not limited to the transportation industry.
Labor shortages are extremely prevalent within the manufacturing industry. Manufacturers are having trouble fully staffing their facilities.
这可能会使某些人感到困惑，因为您也可能会听到有关高失业率的报告。在许多情况下，制造厂位于农村地理位置。意思是工作，人们必须移动，这对他们来说通常是不可行的。
没有能力充分工作人员的设施，制造商将无法达到最大生产能力，从而进一步推广产品的可用性。
Capacity Constraints, Changes in Demand, & Product Allocation
在大流行的高峰期，由于消费者的偏好和需求的变化，清洁和食品包装市场中都有几个关键项目。
鉴于工厂关闭,社会距离guidelines, and unprecedented demand, manufacturers could not keep up, forcing product shortages and allocations.
尽管现在这种压力正在减少大多数与清洁有关的物品（包括个人防护设备和消毒剂），但许多食品包装供应商仍在努力满足新需求。
例如，鉴于劳动力短缺和Covid-19方案，许多餐饮服务处置物（例如外卖容器）供应原材料短缺和制造局限性。结果，价格上涨和短缺非常普遍。
Natural Disasters
在过去的6个月中，增加了一系列自然灾害。这些事件中有许多导致制造厂关闭并限制了生产和产出。
One of the most notable storms was the winter storm that hit Texas during February 2021.
炼油厂，化学植物以及其他原材料和/或产品生产商都感受到了影响。
冬季风暴事件也严重影响了物流。铁路服务，仓库，高速公路和休斯顿港因2021年2月的危险天气而被关闭。
这些自然灾害导致了几项不可抗力的声明。
武力的宣言
A force majeure declaration is a clause within a contract that alleviates parties from performing their contractual obligations under certain circumstances.
Force Majeure (translated literally from French as superior force) covers businesses in the event of natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, other weather disturbances, and events that cannot be reasonably anticipated or controlled. Many companies were also forced to enact this clause during COVID.
With this clause in effect, major manufacturers limited output, failing to produce enough to meet demand.
What’s Happening in our Market?
With a basic understanding of what’s disrupting markets everywhere, now we’ll cover what this means for some of the most popular products we sell. In many cases, this means product allocation and shortages as well as price increases.
Janitorial Services and Foodservice Markets
PAPER BAGS, SACKS & SHOPPERS:
由于塑料和其他原材料短缺，因此有袋子短缺和分配。
The paper bag, sack, and shopper market has been struggling with raw materials costs. This combined with high demand due to the plastic bag bans throughout North America has resulted in 3 price increases since late 2019.
迄今为止，根据产品的不同，总计增加了22-30％，并且可能会继续增加。
TRASH LINERS
树脂是用于创建垃圾桶和袋子的原材料。
Due to several hurricanes along with the devastating storm and deep freeze in Texas in early 2021, resin is in short supply and in some cases on allocation. Since the 3rd quarter of 2019, an unprecedented 9 increases have been announced.
These increases have amounted to an approximate 50% increase in price.
FOODSERVICE PACKAGING
聚乙烯和聚丙烯
The supply of polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) is extremely limited.
自2020年夏天以来，与19020年夏季相关的锁定和几个重大天气事件导致库存水平下降。
In February of 2021, it was estimated that as much as 90% of US polypropylene production was offline, and 80% or more of various PE grade facilities were also shut down after the winter storm in Texas. As a result, nearly 2 billion pounds of resin production has been lost.
This caused several force majeure provisions to go into effect for Polyethylene and Polypropylene from preceding weather and production issues.
Some estimates state it will likely take more than six months to correct the imbalances caused by the storm.
Polypropylene has risen between 20-24% in price due to these shortages from January to today.
STYROFOAM
Foam has also seen many price increases over the past several months, anywhere from 8-20% depending on the product type.
The majority of these increases are due to continued raw material shortages. This market is volatile and expected to stay that way in the near term.
ALUMINUM
在2020年，我们看到铝价以自2013年以来最高的价格。反对预测，随着原材料价格在全球范围内上涨，价格持续上涨。
随着大流行引起的关闭的重新开放，预计需求继续增长，铝的价格预计将继续上涨。
Final Thoughts
The United States and global supply chain is currently experiencing extreme strains due to the pandemic and a combination of other factors.
Our Supply Chain Team will continue to work with our longstanding manufacturing partners, and source new reliable partners as needed, to help secure the necessary products to fill and ship our customer’s orders.
We continue to monitor this ongoing situation, and as news becomes available, we will provide updated information.
Should you have any questions or need help navigating the market, your EBP Sales Executive is available.
