Mankiewicz
Sure Thing: You Can Rely on Mankiewicz in Times of Crisis
This article first appeared in the Railway-News magazine Issue 2 2022.
The global procurement market has been anything but smooth in the past two years and currently remains off track, not least due to the war in Ukraine. The rail industry is also feeling the effects of this, among other things in the form of supply chain problems and bottlenecks in obtaining paint. With its corporate strategy, Mankiewicz, Hamburg-based paint manufacturer, offers security and flexibility in the supply of coatings even in times of raw material shortages and global crises.
If you take a walk through the purchasing departments of manufacturers, you are likely to see concentrated and worried faces, because the last two and a half years have taken their toll on the procurement market. The reasons? First and foremost, of course, Covid-19, which caused major and lasting disruptions to the global flow of goods. The shipping accident in the Suez Canal in 2021 also put further and enduring pressure on logistics chains; not surprising as the canal accounts for 12 percent of global trade. And as if that were not enough, a war with global repercussions has now ignited between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict is not only causing enormous political tensions and humanitarian emergencies, but is also further exacerbating raw material shortages, particularly in the chemicals industry.
This ongoing period of crisis is causing the heads of those in purchasing departments to whirl and those of production managers as well. The daily rebalancing of supply chains is like one juggling act followed by another: goods are becoming more and more expensive and delivery dates increasingly more difficult to calculate – if the raw materials required are available at all.
Covid as Trigger, the War in Ukraine as Catalyst
The crises over the past two and a half years have badly hit the global chemicals market in particular, and this is having a serious impact on the rail industry.
