Maher: Supply Chain Pressures

Published: 25th January 2022 | Issue 70

With the recent upswing in activity across manufacturing, we are now seeing pinch points appearing in the raw material supply chain. Driven by the buoyant oil & gas industry enjoying consistent $80/bbl oil pricing and the limited resumption of global air travel, the world’s steel mills are starting to push lead times out to beyond 12 months in some places. This is a far cry from the situation this time last year when material could be produced in as little as 10/12 weeks.

This capacity bottleneck serves to drive up base pricing and coupled with the historically high Nickel (trading at over $22,000 USD/tonne in Mid-January 2022) and Copper (trading over $9,000 USD in the same period) has created a perfect storm of spiralling raw material costs for critical high-performance alloys for the valve industry.

Stock availability of raw materials has also taken a hit. The impact of COVID saw most raw material stockists look to rationalise and reduce their stockholding in the face to low manufacturing activity. With the sharp ramp up in activity, delays in importation due to BREXIT and long mill leadtimes; availability of “on-the-shelf” stock is, and will continue to be, stretched until the supply chain can “catch-up.”

At Maher we are keen to help our business partners secure their long-term material requirements and have had many years of experience providing a variety of supply chain solutions. If any of our fellow BVAA members are looking for advice on how we can help, please contact your account manager, or email info@maher.com

As a long-established stockist and machinist of high-strength, high-performance alloys for Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Naval & Marine, Defence, Power Generation and other special applications, we can assist you with material requirements for Nickel Alloys, Copper Alloys and other special steel grades. Our in-house services include cutting, first stage machining such as turning and boring, precision machining, heat treatment & NDT. Due to the stringent requirements of the industries we service, quality is fundamental to everything we do. Maher’s quality systems are fully certified to ISO 9001 and AS 9100 rev D and we hold full JOSCAR Stage 2 accreditation for naval & marine, aerospace, defence, and security applications. Supported by both customer and industry approvals, we deliver to the full supply chain, from OEMs to smaller machine shops.