After record shattering sales due to Covid-19 resulted in record 2021 orders to China factories, what could go wrong? A major meltdown in the supply chain via the shipping industry. It appears there just aren’t enough fright ships online to move the amount of goods needed to re-stock to comfortable levels for many distributors, on a global level.
With each passing week of the ongoing global shipping crisis, it becomes less likely that the fireworks industry can fully “catch-up” on shipping in time for July 4th. Once again this week, only a fraction of the product waiting for shipping could find space on a boat. COSCO canceled a sailing, making the week’s total shipments even less than the previous. Yesterday brought more challenges with Huayang announcing that CMA is facing a new shortage of empty containers, and that will likely effect CMA bookings in the coming days and weeks.
Production is slowing due to overcrowding in the warehouses, and Liuyang had several days of below freezing weather which pushed the humidity below the 25% safety threshold and the government temporarily stopped star making, chemical mixing, etc. Therefore, factories will run out of stars sometime this week and need another week to build stock levels back. Then we will transition into Chinese New Year shutdowns. So production will slow in the coming weeks.