Dear Valued Distributors and Customers,
We would like to inform you on the on-going trend for the fasteners industry. You may have experienced a shortage in the market supply, soaring prices and prolonged production lead time. Thus it is important for us to share this information with you so that you could be alerted and make anticipation of your stock planning.
The current situation is due to 3 main reasons:
In less than three years’ time, Taiwan has rejuvenated its position in global supply chains. The exodus of manufacturers to China is ancient history. Instead, many of them have been choosing to come home, first to circumvent stiff U.S. tariffs on China-made products, then to mitigate the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic that began in Wuhan. This has caused a surge in demand for wire rod materials and packing materials since January. We estimate that there will be further increase in price in the future as the imbalance of supply and demand is on-going.
2.EPDM washers supply shortage
We have been receiving many feedbacks from EPDM washer suppliers on their supply shortage issue. There are two major sources of EPDM washers in the market which are Japan and the US. However the supply of EPDM washers from the U.S has been unstable since December 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
A 60% increase in production lead time from 90 days to 150 days or even longer is estimated due to the waiting time for washers supply. We have also received some updates from EPDM washers factory that they will stop taking in order until June due to being unable to secure supplies.
With the global containers shortage since December last year adding the Suez Canal incident earlier this year, the shipping industry was in chaos and the trend is foreseen to be on-going. Customers might be experiencing surges in logistic cost or longer waiting time for containers available.
In view of the situation, we would like to encourage our valued distributors and customers to make early purchasing plans to minimize the disruption to your supply chain as much as possible as we foresee the situation will remain for awhile.
Kindly send us your purchase order to ericlim@fiablej.com as soon as possible while you can to lock in the prices before it goes further up and we will try our best to expedite the production as fast as we can subject to the raw materials and manpower availability.
We understand that there are many uncertainties during this trying time and we hope to continue rendering our services and products in the best possible ways to cater your demand.
Thank you.
Stay Safe!
FIABLE PTE LTD
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