Feel the burn has a different meaning at my house. We like hot and spicy. We eat salsa on chips and use it in recipes. But the stuff has become increasingly difficult to locate.
Shelves have some mild and some medium but not hot. Why? Hot is a lot more popular for one, and there’s a global glass shortage for two.
A problem that has impacted sauces to salsas to everything packed in glass.
As frustrating as the current situation can be, taking time to understand the cause of the shortage may save you some time, money, and future headaches.
“The U.S. has a limited number of glass furnaces to begin with,” explained Brett Atlas, Senior Vice President of MJS Packaging. Atlas has been in the packaging industry for two decades and says he has never seen a shortage quite like this one.
Because glass production has migrated to overseas factories, glass fell victim to the current global shipping container shortage. Atlas claims that shipping containers are drastically more expensive than in previous years and are frequently delayed or lost at the port.
Another issue is demand. The political response to the pandemic locked tens of millions, nay billions, behind closed doors, which created escalated demand for things like beer and wine and whisky—lots of things packaged in glass.
The lack of glass furnaces (in the US), increased demand, custom production requirements, alongside all the other supply chain issues rippling through the system since March of 2020, and you’ve got a packaging disaster.
To make glass bottles, there needs to be a wide inventory of raw materials available. One of the key raw materials used to make this packaging material, sand, is facing a huge shortage. Sand is the world’s second most-consumed resource after water. It is also used to create everyday products and its use may not be commonly known to the average consumer. Some of these items include smartphone and computer silicon chips, concrete, paint, chemicals and more. …
Various companies and manufacturers are seeing lead times increase or seeing production go from the United States to overseas. The overseas manufacturers may have the bandwidth and materials to get the job done but may not work for your business model if you need the glass packaging immediately. This option is best for companies who are forecasting out their glass needs or can wait during the longer lead times.
Some of these products could be repacked in other materials. Still, even when that’s practical, the shift puts pressure on other parts of the packaging networks dealing with the side-effects of heavy-handed political meddling.
And it’s not just glass. Corrugated prices have been climbing rapidly with longer and longer lead times, a problem that impacts costs further by making shipping the glass jars and bottles, when you can get them, that much more costly. Increases are passed down to consumers.
And the shortage of aluminum is also still an issue.
Delays that don’t just resolve themselves in days and weeks, especially when your government has incentivized not working or firing employees if they refuse the State approved experimental pharmaceutical.
And they think they are the experts?
Sorry, I still don’t see it.
