Chip crisis, container bottlenecks, congestion in the Suez Canal and rising commodity prices – the COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges for global supply relationships. In March, the world still seemed all right, but things escalated during April. Whether it's displays, PCs or other electronical components, there's an increasing lack of merchandise on every corner.
This is further aggravated – also due to the pandemic – by the fact that a wide variety of corporate and business processes are delayed across markets. Factory closures, transport breakdowns, material bottlenecks and quarantine measures are causing major disruptions to supply chains. Multiple national lockdowns continue to slow or even temporarily stop the flow of raw materials and finished goods, disrupting manufacturing as a result. All of these factors combined not only lead to longer delivery times, but also to a rise in transport costs and thus for raw materials. One of the results is a significant price increases by our pre-suppliers. The pandemic-related limited availability of individual electronic components poses the same challenges to a wide variety of industries and market participants: be it the automotive industry or manufacturers of cell phones and computers through to household appliances. Thus, the current situation affects especially in the electronics industry. This cannot be completely compensated for and will undoubtedly lead to an increase in prices.
Of course with our combined efforts of the meteocontrol team, we are doing our very best to comply with the agreed lead time, but unfortunately we cannot guarantee the scheduled lead/delivery times. We are constantly working on allocating goods for projects in good time to ensure the smoothest possible rollout for our customers and avoid bottlenecks. One of the measures in order management at meteocontrol to counter the supply crisis is to significantly increase the exchange of information with our suppliers and to keep all parties involved up to date at all times.