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Manufacturing
With the Covid-19 pandemic and global supply chain issues continuing to undermine global trading patterns, particularly in Europe and the US, Mark LeDoux, founder and CEO of Natural Alternatives International tells Martin Morris how these deadlocks and delays are impacting the ingredients industry.
Break in the chain F
or a major forerunner in the natural products space, a lot has happened on Mark LeDoux’s watch since he founded NAI, an international leader in custom contract nutritional supplement manufacturing, four decades ago. Fast forward to the present though and he won’t need reminding that his industry, along with many others, has been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also meant that global supply chains are coming under increasing strain due to excess demand – skewed in part by many economies simultaneously re-opening after domestically imposed lockdowns.
Manufacturing has been one obvious casualty. As LeDoux is quick to observe: “The concept of ‘just- in-time’ inventory management has largely been discredited in the face of supply shortages brought on by a series of plant closures, transportation interruptions, and labour shortages.” Currently, materials in short supply are no longer in the ‘esoteric’ category but are more basic to the pharmaceutical and dietary supplement industry at large. Indeed, common production aids known as excipients, used widely in
the preparation of solid dosage forms of medicines and supplements, for example, are experiencing shortages in the supply chain. This, in turn, is leading to delays in production and to shortages at critical control points in the health care, retail and food service industries. “The fiasco associated with personal protective equipment on prominent display at the outset of the ‘pandemic’ was Exhibit A for what happens when ‘just- in-time’ meets raw desperate demand,” LeDoux points out. Against this backdrop, the regulatory chickens have come home to roost, more especially when it comes to offloading goods in Californian ports for onward transportation, for example. This is a very real issue for California-based NAI, given the importance of the state’s ports to the wider US economy. Indeed, local legislators saw fit several years ago to impose restrictions on transport vehicles in order to protect the environment and, in the process, constricted the supply of trucks by rendering owner- operators unable to pick up containers at various ports, under highly restrictive labour bills. Independent truck drivers, as well as Uber or Lyft drivers, were deemed to
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