{"id":4334,"date":"2021-11-04T16:56:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T15:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/tense-material-supply\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T10:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:44:07","slug":"tense-material-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/news-2\/tense-material-supply\/","title":{"rendered":"Tense material supply"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global raw material shortages pose a challenge for BVS Purchasing<\/strong>
\nPlants operated by automakers such as BMW, Opel, and Mercedes are or have been shut down. The construction industry is complaining about extreme price increases for wood. According to a survey by the ifo Institute, 77.4% of industrial companies in Germany reported shortages in the procurement of intermediate products and raw materials in September. Our purchasing department is also far from \u201cbusiness as usual.\u201d Schedule changes, requests for alternatives, and price adjustments are the order of the day. <\/p>\n


\nMetal prices are spiraling upwards.<\/strong>
\nThe price increases for the metals most frequently processed by BVS are considerable. “The price of steel has risen by 157% since the beginning of 2020, the price of aluminum by 142%, and aluminum-zinc is practically unavailable,” explains Harald Steiner, Managing Director of BVS Blechtechnik. “Raw materials often have to be purchased ad-hoc, when they happen to be available from the supplier, and then in large quantities,” Steiner continues. This means, in some cases, high inventory levels of individual materials; for example, we currently have 30 tons of one metal in stock. Meanwhile, other inventories cannot be replenished. We often receive cancellations from suppliers just one or two days before the promised delivery date. The stocks at our service companies are practically depleted; these depend on manufacturers and mills. According to a recent report, no improvement is expected at European rolling mills in the first half of 2022. <\/p>\n

Silicon price shock worsens aluminum production<\/strong>
\nAccording to the latest information, German and European aluminum plants are considering reducing or even halting aluminum production. This, in turn, is due to a price shock in silicon, which is used as a plasticizer in aluminum alloys. Energy problems in China have brought silicon production there to a near standstill. For BVS, this means that aluminum will become even less available in the near future, and the price spiral will continue to rise. Because of these circumstances, volume contracts with our suppliers are currently not possible. Conversely, this means that we can unfortunately only provide limited information to our customers regarding prices and delivery terms. <\/p>\n

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Material shortages also affect intermediate products and standard items<\/strong>
\nThe situation is particularly delicate when there is short-notice demand, and a successful order requires a great deal of effort. However, due to rescheduling of orders, we frequently have to deal with last-minute changes to parts, materials, or items. The electronic components needed for complete end devices pose particular challenges for us. The global semiconductor chip crisis is resulting in very long delivery times here. Even standard items, connectors, fans, and powdered materials are either unavailable or difficult to obtain. For example, lead times of eight to nine weeks must be accepted for packaging materials and cardboard boxes. Maintaining a certain level of inventory and placing timely reorders are essential for standard items. The organizational workload in our purchasing department has increased significantly, as requests for alternatives, schedule changes, and price adjustments in the system must be handled on a continuous basis. <\/p>\n

Container Prices from China Are Skyrocketing<\/strong>
\nObtaining raw materials and supplies from overseas is quite expensive. Due to port closures in China and bottlenecks along shipping routes, container prices from China have risen six to sevenfold. In early 2020, a standard container from China to B\u00f6blingen cost approximately \u20ac2,500; currently (October 2021), the cost has risen to around \u20ac17,000. <\/p>\n

Many factors are causing a real storm in the procurement market as a result of the pandemic, including increased demand for a wide range of raw materials, tight transportation routes and scarce production resources around the globe. Our purchasing team continues to utilize all available options and channels and draws on decades of relationships with suppliers to maintain production schedules and deliver the ordered housings and assemblies to our customers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global raw material shortages pose a challenge for BVS Purchasing Plants operated by automakers such as BMW, Opel, and Mercedes are or have been shut down. The construction industry is complaining about extreme price increases for wood. According to a survey by the ifo Institute, 77.4% of industrial companies in Germany reported shortages in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[277],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7786,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions\/7786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bvs-blechtechnik.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}