You Aren’t Alone – SPI Group Understands Supply Chain

On a recent October flight over Long Beach/LA harbor, I counted over 60 ships anchored or floating off shore. Every day the numbers change depending on who is reporting. However, one thing is consistent; there are major delays affecting every segment of our economy and there is not a short-term fix. Multiple news accounts address what is happening but because industry experts don’t know when the bottlenecks at the ports will improve, all we hear is bad news. Whether your ingredients are imported or domestically processed, many of the challenges are the same. The quantitative measurement of the strain that food manufacturers feel is seen by way of inflationary price increases; constant delays of inbound ingredients; and ingredient allocations that make it impossible to schedule production.

What can SPI Group do to help you? We are more than an ingredient distributor; more than logistics support. SPI Group, over its past 53 years, prides itself in being a partner in meeting your ingredient needs. Whether it is identifying a solution to a technical challenge or being counted on to meet your monthly demand for ingredients, our reputation speaks for itself. We are not immune to the delays and inflationary price increases that have been seen across every facet of the food industry. However, since we strategically purchase many different ingredients from our premium line of suppliers, we have the ability to at least mitigate some of the severe challenges that you are seeing. This requires a commitment from our customers to forecast their demand so we can reduce delays in receiving your ingredients. We have the same lead times as everyone else, but SPI Group does everything in our power to reduce the negative impacts that you face through trying to navigate this alone. We are not simply a logistics arm. SPI Group provides technical sales support and customer service. Today we must forecast future demand and because demand exceeds supply in some cases, ingredient manufacturers will not allow spot purchases. As demand has increased dramatically, the supply chain cannot keep up. Many challenges cannot be easily fixed: short term labor shortages, limits to raw material availability (some caused by weather & harvest yields), production line limits due to Covid-19 restrictions, and lack of truck drivers needed to deliver freight.

We would like to talk to you about your current and future food ingredient requirements. Please reach out to your local SPI Group sales manager or call us at 800-351-8012.