Tribune. Would we have predicted that the Covid-19 crisis, which had already strained global business supply chains in the winter of 2020, would continue to severely disrupt the entire global industry? Companies have built their 2021 budgets by counting on a crisis that was only to last a few months, until everything is back to normal and everyone gets back to their former life. But value chains continue to suffer from the effects of the health crisis as the economy rebounds strongly, with global growth expected to exceed 6% in 2021. This situation is likely to continue and what companies are suffering today hui may well become their new normal.
It’s been a year since each week has its share of ruptures. After the shortage of plastic, wood, then the container crisis and the price of maritime transport multiplied by six, here is the congestion of ports due to delays in loading goods accumulated for months. And the palm oil crisis. Production has been excellent this year but there is a lack of seasonal workers to harvest the nuts in an Indonesia and Malaysia ravaged by the Covid. This cheap labor, which we believed to be excessive, an adjustment variable in our globalized economies, is becoming a scarce “commodity” …
Value chains, which have not yet managed to pass cost increases on to their customers, will continue to suffer and plunge many players into bankruptcy. Added to this are the expected repercussions of power cuts in China linked to the environmental shift of the Beijing government. If the “factory of the world” decides to downsize, Western industries, despite their desire to repatriate productions that appeared at the height of the Covid crisis, will certainly encounter major difficulties in continuing to produce. Indeed, after years of dumping – and the destruction of the industrial fabric of developed countries – all suppliers today are predominantly Chinese.
Towards more balanced exchanges
It is illusory to hope for an imminent return to the “normality” of the last decades, that of a world supply far superior to the demand of Western companies and of commercial relations based on the sole balance of power, most often to the detriment. providers. We will have to invent a more balanced way of interacting in our trade relations. Shortages are now leading buyers to find themselves faced with suppliers who choose to deliver one customer rather than another depending on the quality of the commercial relationship. The time for partnerships and the creation of shared value has come, between actors who will be chosen and will project themselves around the development of sustainable solutions. It is possible that this will reignite a period rich in innovation, and perhaps even progress, for the benefit of consumers and the planet.
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