Insight

A review and preview of the global fastener market

Named after the Roman god who is often depicted as having two faces – due to its ability to look to the future and to the past – the Janus Perspective is a unique feature that includes a wide cross section of global fastener business leaders, who have all contributed their retrospective of 2021 and thoughts on prospects and challenges for 2022.

Philippe Purgy, director

2021 finished with some great and different feelings. Indeed, the economic situation started a huge rising trend – since the middle of 2020, after the first pandemic wave – well helped by the numerous domestic recovery plans set-up by almost every country, as well as the European plan.

These large economic projects pulled up the building industries and had positive effects all over Europe and the rest of the world. For more than one year, we observed a rising demand of global needs – especially in the field of building, construction and renovation.

The raw materials involved in the building sector include wood, concrete, carbon steel, stainless steel, and aluminium, and for the second fix it includes copper, plastic, nickel, rubber, synthetic putties, etc. This means that a lot of different manufacturers, distributors and installers were involved and able to increase their sales and generally speaking their business. As a company we made the most of this dynamic situation and we can positively say that 2021 was a ‘grand cru’.

The consequence of this higher demand however is inflation, which has not wasted any time making its impact. All goods have seen a rising cost in 2021, some very quickly, other slowly, depending on the global demand.

All manufacturers, based in Europe and Asia, have been concerned by a shortage of materials, decreasing of productivity, and finally by longer delivery times. Furthermore, some other disruptions have appeared during this year – some new variants of the pandemic; the growing cost of energy; and the difficulties of international transport.

The transport sector especially has been impacted since the middle of 2020. Every field of international transport has had difficulty with storage, lack of containers, increasing energy price, reduction of shipping speed, modifications of sea routing, additional blank sailings, new booking rules (ACID), as well as unprecedented port congestion. This has caused a drop in vessel and container availability and pulled up the cost of freight – especially international transport, which has increased by an unusually high manner.

It is very hazardous to guess what next year will bring to us. You might think the first quarter will keep on the same trend – good levels of demand, quite high general prices, and some difficulties with products being delivered on time. However, there are so many changes that can occur during the next few months. We may consider that the material price is high but the growing potential does still exist, because of a high global demand. Concerning the transport charges, we expect a better future, but the improving effect seems to be taking a very long time, which means the difficulties will remain for several months.

Whatever will happen it is important to think global because developments and actions in certain regions of the world can quickly impacting another part of the world – whether it be a disease, economic, transport or environmental.