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Supply Chains Improving? | Welcoming Natalie Craig to Packaging World

As I sit down to type this, it’s 10Β°F in Chicago, it’s dark by 4:30 p.m., the Bears are in year 37 of their rebuild, and I’m quarantining with COVID-19.

Matt Reynolds1

I’m lucky and relieved to have an extremely mild case (thanks booster), likely the vaccine-defying Omicron variant, but it’s still pretty dreary around here.

Even so, I can’t help but feel optimistic about the coming year. Things are really looking up in the U.S. for both packagers and their suppliers, as the cover of this magazine indicates. I’m not just waking up to this feeling, either. At PMMI’s Annual Meeting this past November, Alan Beaulieu, president of ITR Economics said he was highly optimistic about the U.S.’s near and long-term economic future, particularly as it pertains to packaging.

β€œManufacturing in this nation is strong. It’s vibrant,” Beaulieu says. β€œWe are going to see manufacturing continue to grow and forecast record levels of output in this country in about a year.”

He emphasized that while a global pandemic roiled markets with uncertainty, CPGs and their OEM and materials suppliers have weathered the storm well, and that some of the worrying around supply chains has been overwrought. We’re still on and will continue to be on, through most of 2022, the lucrative side of the four-year cycle. Because of government stimulus and consumer spending, the supply chain issue, Beaulieu says, is not a result of companies falling behind in the production of goods. Instead, consumers bought more and continue to buy more than they previously did. As the stimulus and unemployment checks dry up, the supply chain will stabilize.

β€œThis is a demand problem, not a supply chain problem,” he said. β€œAs demand eases, you see the supply chain delivering more, then all of a sudden, the situation works its way out, and prices will reflect that [with lowering inflation].”

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