Supply Challenges
The challenges our suppliers carried into the new year largely remain with us, and we foresee these continuing into early summer. In short, these can be summarised as follows:
Freight Availability: Getting product on a ship from the Far East remains difficult. Supply is falling short of demand – despite the enormity of the transport ships, there is not enough space! Container shortages in the Far East are continuing to be a severe issue leading to longer lead times. As widely reported, this is due to 2 main factors, decreased port activity and recent delays from the Suez Canal.
UK Port Congestion: Delays at UK ports continue, and in some, this has deteriorated. As an example, at Felixstowe for every container that departs the port by truck or rail approximately two arrive by ship. Post-Brexit cross-Channel shipments are more complicated under dual-Customs regimes and this could be a factor in logistics bottlenecks.
Consumer Demand: With more pets and consumers spending more time in the company of their pets, demand for pet products continues to grow. Demand is up over 50% versus Q1 2020. For several global brands, this growth in demand is also being experienced in other markets leaving everyone competing for stock and raw materials. Suppliers are looking at ways to increase capacity but this will take time to flow through to supply.
Like you, we find this frustrating but must remain focused on what we can control and influence. As such we continue to work very closely with all our suppliers to maximise our availability to you. We will also continue to look at alternative products to provide switching options for longer-term issues. It is important to note that the impact of the above affects not just finished products but also raw materials and packaging, which has a knock-on effect on locally manufactured products.
Some of the key brands impacted by the above include: KONG, Ancol, Petface.
Some of the key products that seem to be impacted by the above include dog crates, puppy pads, extending dog leads, dog toys and accessories.
We aim to update our website as often as possible but with availability changing on an almost daily basis there will unfortunately be instances where we cannot supply the product and a refund will be offered.
