I work in Electronic Components - Supply and support. The supply situation is incredible now. The worst I have seen in 35 years. Items that were 2 weeks delivery are now 14. Items that were 14 are now 36. Most suppliers have increased prices twice this year by around 15% total. Now our suppliers are telling us that even the orders we have place which have been acknowledged may change price and lead-time. We are rapidly moving to “ allocation” – place an order and when it is ready we shall tell you how many you shall get and what price. Plastics are the same This is going to affect all works of life including Bikes, for most of the year. If you are thinking about a purchase - hurry !
Years ago I worked in the construction joinery industry. In the early 80’s delivery lead times for domestic and commercial doors (and we used to produce 30,000 a week) was 72! weeks!! And even then some orders were either part delivered or late by 2-3 weeks.
Had the same conversation daily with the Mrs, colleagues and staff all last week. It's a perfect storm of factory closures globally at differing times due to their individual governments lock down policies and logistics / freight costs being 4 to 5 times what they were a year ago for 20ft and 40ft containers. Raw materials are in short supply at the moment for lots of things too (lockdown / shutdowns) and producers are playing catch up. Containers are in short supply because there are 100's of thousands of them in the wrong place because loads of container ships were mothballed last year when demand dropped off the edge of a cliff as daily running costs were too high for them to just sit there , and those things don't just switch back to fully up and running within minutes. I'm having raw material and finished product price increases across the board. A fuck ton of it is down to the freight costs. The voloume of containers we had goods in during April 2021 cost us just over $104,000 That exact same volume and mix of containers in April 2020 cost $23000 Weve been absorbing the margin hit since August last year but it's just been decided we're pushing out a price increase as of June
I think this is the reason graphics cards are so scarce currently? I've had a nightmare trying to buy a graphics card for my tech PC since working from home last year, without paying silly money for one. Finally managed to source one from a colleague in Japan, at RRP!
Graphics cards are what they use for bitcoin mining. With bitcoins current situation, they are being bought up to create bitcoin farms. Thats not helping the situation. Then you have the increasing demand for chips in the automotive industry. Supply and demand.
I work in the motorcycle parts distribution business for one of the larger companies in the UK. Yeah, some stuff has gone up - but it always does at this time of the year. Some of those costs are down to transport price increases and some are container price increases. Many containers were scrapped or mothballed last year, so there is a shortage of those, and the ships that carry them. The overall price rises are still on par with what I have always seen over the decades though. Not everything has gone up - some lines have come down - its as it always is. Parts availability right now has suffered to some extent, but that is more down to demand exceeding supply right now as the country starts up again, basically cos we never ordered enough over winter - imports are paid up front, depending where they are coming from they can have a 3 month lead time and when the coffers are low and nothing is selling, its tricky to get the balance right without taking the company under. We are probably at about 85-90% of normal stock levels. Business now is almost at normal levels, stuff is starting to arrive and within another month, everything will be normal again. If you are retail and your suppliers are not up to the job - you need to find better suppliers really
There's loads on the container and freight issues, and with landed costs increasing the amount they are it's more likely than not that everyone will see at least temporary price increases across most goods especially those that have been manufactured in the far East or Bangladesh etc Our European manufacturers are still facing increases themselves in raw materials, so while a 30% hike in aluminium won't trickle all the way through due to percentage used within some of the machines they make for us, it's expected we'll see some. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...continues-import-prices-Far-East-surging.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/greats...r-as-freight-rates-skyrocket/?sh=2c21cf0339a6
One thing's certain - inflation is not dead, it's just been sleeping ( apart from the housing market, where it has been rampant, but ignored, apparently).
