Where should I get my plastics? Combatting current market challenges
In a world dominated by supply chain issues and price increases, this blog explores the advantages of working with a one-stop shop plastics supplier
As supply chain and logistics problems continue to bog down countless industries, it’s become very difficult for many companies to know where to turn. Price increases for products; holding fees for undelivered goods and desperate searches for material providers are proving highly frustrating for industries that rely heavily on plastics. What’s more, energy costs are soaring and are showing no signs of slowing down. Rising energy costs affect not only the costs for energy consumed for heat, power, and electricity generation to run operations and transport products and materials, but also impact the costs of raw materials.
A material with countless uses – from signage to fabrication; from construction to DIY – plastic’s lightweight, versatile and durable characteristics make it a hugely practical and essential substrate. Many companies across the world, whether they are in construction, pharmaceutical, hospitality or printing, require a consistent supply of plastic throughout the year. Receiving these products is dependent on suppliers who, due to global shortages and logistics issues, are unable to supply products with the same level of reliability they could previously.
Some of the world’s leading plastics manufacturers have production sites spread around the world. When supply chains are moving smoothly, this often works seamlessly but, as individual manufacturing plants often specialise in one specific product, disrupted supply chains present a massive challenge to this model. Customers making large orders for multiple plastic products often have to contend with orders arriving from different places, with radically different lead times. On top of the labour shortage slowing down shipping rates, having plastic shipped from multiple locations not only threatens the consistency of deliveries, but it increases costs and overall CO2 emissions.
This is especially problematic for large projects, which can range from building construction to point-of-sale displays for retailers
One-stop-shop solution
While no plastics manufacturer can truly say they’ve avoided any problems with global supply and labour shortages, and price increases, some companies have handled the crisis better than others – in particular those who have a streamlined, single facility that manufacturers all its products in one location.
At Brett Martin, we manufacture all our products on-site at our headquarters near Belfast in Northern Ireland. This means our customers and distributors can be sure of receiving all their products at similar lead times as they are all shipped from a single location. Having everything made on one site means that we have economies of scale in our support departments such as HR, accounts and marketing, allowing us to keep costs lower and provide our customers with competitive prices – no matter what sector they work in.
We don’t just take great pride in the products we produce; our sustainable approach to business means we can generate up to 50% of our power supply via renewable sources. Having everything on one site has meant it is economically viable for Brett Martin to have a wind turbine and dedicated solar farm; something that would not be possible if we had multiple locations across the globe.
While we take great satisfaction in our headquarters’ operations, we are also very thankful to have such a reliable source of international distributors. We always ensure our stock levels are sufficient, developing strong relationships with our distributors and informing them regularly of our product range supply levels and our new-to-market plastic solutions.
While the world continues to work its way around increased prices, unprecedented delays and shortages, we’re working hard to keep our customers and distributors up to date with our supply levels and product deliveries.
