Supply chain issues causing price highs never seen before, says Sysco exec

“I have never in all my years in this industry seen prices this high,” Director of Merchandising at Sysco Bahamas Food Services Tiffani Evans said yesterday, as she described how supply chain issues have been affecting operations in The Bahamas, explaining that it is difficult to predict when things will get better.

Evans, who was a speaker at The Counselors Limited’s Supply Chain Crunch webinar, explained that Sysco has been somewhat fortunate in its search for hard-to-find items, given that it has some of its own brands.

“One of the fortunate things for us is we are part of a global company and they have their own brands, so we have been able to find certain products through the Sysco brand to fill in the gap where we were short on our regular brand, so that has also helped save our customers a little bit of money because those products were made solely for us,” Evans said. 

Nonetheless, she said the company has had to build inventories of products that have been hard to acquire, especially maintenance items that will ensure the company’s vehicles remain in working order.

“We can have all the food we want in the warehouse, but we can’t deliver it if our trucks aren’t running,” said Evans.

She explained that across the world, shipping constraints, labor shortages, raw material shortages and packaging constraints have all affected the operations of wholesale food providers in the country.

Evans said Sysco has had to be flexible in regards to the brands that it imports.

“We’ve been working tirelessly on sourcing products globally, not just through the US,” she said.

According to Evans, Sysco has looked to Europe, Brazil, Thailand and China to ensure it can continue to supply certain products.

However, she lamented, despite being able to find products, shipping issues continue to stymie the timeliness of deliveries.

“One of the things we have learned from the pandemic with the containers and the world-wide shipping, if one of the wheels break down in a country as big as the US and they can’t handle the amount of containers coming in, then it causes a backlog for the rest of the world, even if they’re not on the same supply route, because they are jamming up the containers,” she said.

“Their inability to move those containers impacts the entire world because they’re fighting for container space. This causes high freight costs and long delays.”

She added that labor shortages across the world has meant there has been a shortage of many types of products. These issues have led to inflationary prices that Evans said she has not seen while working in the wholesale food industry.

“I’m hoping it’s going to be over in the next six months, but it’s difficult to say when things will get better,” she said. 

According to Evans, Sysco has invested in helping local farmers to produce local products in order to keep local supply chains robust, even investing in ripening rooms at its facilities.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/supply-chain-issues-causing-price-highs-never-seen-before-says-sysco-exec/