Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1390499
16 PalletCentral • July-August 2021 palletcentral.com Dan Berken President Go Fast Manufacturing Lumber sky rocketing and labor shortages/rates on the rise call for some intuitive planning and creative, out-of-the-box, ideas. Crazy times call for great minds. At Go Fast we are experiencing a surge in customers looking to replace slower outdated equipment with something newer. With the shortage of labor and rising labor costs, every hour counts. Looking into equipment replacement with some- thing that gets 25-50% more done in an hour not only pencils the ROI but allows for moving employ- ees to other stations. We are helping our customers look at these work stations and analyze how they can get more with less. Often we are able to break down the operational costs and find savings in both labor and maintenance. As a company we are holding the supply chain curve as best as we are able. When the pandemic hit we saw the shortages early on. We have aggressively been buying our supplies ahead in bulk at an attempt to keep machinery costs down and completion times on track. When has it ever been a better time to look at your operations and see how to best optimize? If not now, when? How can you get more with less? Let us help break down your work cells and look at the cost of operation. This will help determine where equipment upgrades are most needed. In doing this, it will aid getting through the crazy market we are finding ourselves entangled in. Luc Grauwet Vice President PGS Group COVID-19 has at least one positive effect, it is an extraordi- nary accelerator of trends. The entire timber sector needed to recover decent prices in order to live and finance investments. It would have taken 10 to15 years to get there without the COVID crisis. During this crisis, we have seen several factors, namely: • Wood pallets are essential. • Wood is a raw material, just like iron, gas or oil, with price variations that can also be significant, or even speculation => the market was not used to this kind of action, as the price of wood has always been fairly stable. • The consumption of wood is exploding throughout the world, promoted in various sectors such as construction. We communicate a lot with our customers and everyone understands that we need an additional budget so as not to be in short supply. We are also working with our customers on the eco-design of our pallets to reduce the volume of timber. We have developed new partnerships with new suppliers to expand our sources of supply. We have also made external acquisitions at sawmills to reduce our dependence on third parties. The prices now are not so far from those before the 2000s' financial crisis. The whole world purchased wood for 15 years very much below its value. It was an inevitable catch-up to preserve our industry and promote the best sustainable materials. Moreover we remind our customers every day that using a pallet just once is not responsible and that we must work for a better circular economy and reuse pallets. We started a "Wood Market Analysis" every month in order to inform our customers about the situation of wood, but also on steel, transport, etc. We also guide our customers towards reverse and reuse solutions for their pallets. Once the strong summer period in construction has passed, prices will stabilize. With this decent price level, investments in sawmills will be relaunched and capacities will increase all over the world and even if demand remains strong, we will achieve a certain equilibrium. One thing is for sure, we absolutely do not believe prices will fall back to 2020 levels! Debra Berry CEO Berry Industrial Group We have continually educated our customers during these extraordinary times about the lumber shortages leading to extended lead times, price increases and potential species adjustments. They have been totally understanding. We are unable to forecast the end of these shortages, but we have suggested it will probably go at least until year end. As little control as our customers have, I think they feel more engaged when they are aware and kept up-to-date of the marketplace.