Supply Chain Disruption Update

All across the world, supply chains that were disrupted by Flu Manchu lockdowns don’t seem to have fully recovered. Maybe it’s because some political entities are still doing lockdowns, or maybe it’s because vaccine mandates are making critical worker shortages worse. Here are a few data points:

  • Remember The Great Toilet Paper Panic of 2020? It’s back!

    Costco warned customers this week about a toilet paper shortage as the wholesale retailer is having challenging time stocking shelves due to supply chain disruptions, according to Fox News.

    Costco told Fox News via an email statement, “Due to increased volumes, you may see a slight delay in the processing of this order.” The retailer noted that the company is “working to fulfill everything as quickly as possible.”

    Costco announced purchasing limits on some products but didn’t mention specific items, saying, “some warehouses may have temporary item limits on select items.”

    Some shoppers have reported other items of Costco warehouses are either in short supply or there are purchase limits.

    Bottled water seems another shortage item.

    As for myself, I made sure to start picking up one of the giant megapacks of toilet paper every trip to Sam’s back when lumber prices started spiking, on the “wood = paper” theory, so I’m set for a while.

  • The semiconductor shortage is getting worse. “A wave of delta-variant cases in Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines is causing production delays at factories that cut and package semiconductors, creating new bottlenecks on top of those caused by soaring demand for chips.” Eh, the slice-and-dice portion of the business is some 20 orders of magnitude less demanding than the actual fabrication process, so I expect that hiccup to be overcome quickly. The fab capacity constraints are going to be with us until next year when more capacity starts coming online (or the Biden Recession starts driving the smaller fabless design houses out of business, freeing up foundry capacity). And Biden Administration threats to invoke the Defense Production Act over semiconductor shortages shows that they have no frigging clue how the semiconductor industry works. The auto manufacturers screwed up by cancelling foundry runs last year, which means they’re paying the price this year. No bureaucratic inquiry is going to result in expanded fab capacity, any more than nine women can get together to produce a healthy baby in one month, and there’s no “hoarding” going on.
  • Shortages are also reported of big rig and diesel parts:

  • There’s a gas shortage in the UK over a shortage of truck drivers.
  • It’s even affecting Halloween decorations.

  • On the ammo shortage front, I’m hearing from friends that it’s still pricey, but can be found a bit more readily than last year. According to this report, handgun ammo is starting to be more available, but rifle ammo is still very scarce with hunting season looming.
  • Finally, from back in August, here’s a piece on how supply chain disruptions were going to get worse.

    The demand for shipping containers greatly exceeds the supply, and this has pushed global shipping container rates to levels we have never seen before.

    And once shipping containers are delivered to U.S. ports, there isn’t enough port workers to unload them all.

    It can now literally take months for products that are made in China to get to the U.S. retailers that originally ordered them.

    • Some data points for your consideration rather than attempted prognostication on whether things are getting better or worse.

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    This entry was posted on Sunday, September 26th, 2021 at 5:08 PM and is filed under Economics, Guns, Regulation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    One Response to “Supply Chain Disruption Update”

    1. Supply Chain Disruption Update for September 28, 2021 « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      September 28, 2021 at 9:47 AM

      […] didn’t expect to do another supply chain disruption update just two days after the last one, but there’s a lot more news popping […]

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