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.

Last year was a year characterised by the continuous breaking of the old patterns recorded in the last decade. For Berardi Group, on the other hand, it was a satisfactory year after the forced closures of 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 meant that 2021 would be a difficult year, where the world economy would restart at a slow pace due to uncertainty in the markets and global demand. Berardi’s goal for 2021 was to support its customers, many of whom actually experienced significant production increases due to the recovery that took place throughout 2021.

A critical situation regarding sea freight gave rise to an absence of raw materials in western markets, which triggered an increase in prices for the material available at the start of the year and continued to get worse as the year progressed. Whilst there was these raw material challenges and supply lead times issues, Berardi was able to overcome these problems by making moves and decisions in advance, thanks to supply agreements with its partners, as well as rethinking processes in some of its departments such as logistics, marketing, as well as the corporate strategies themselves.

For 2022 Berardi Group expects it will still be difficult to find raw materials, at least for the first quarter. However, whilst it will probably be another year full of challenges, at the same time it will be full of opportunities for those who are able to read and interpret the unprecedented factors that we are experiencing. The market has certainly accelerated the race towards the search for new structured and performing suppliers, capable of offering services that make it possible to reduce procurement problems.

This concept is amplified in C-class components, where the low unit value of the products and the multiple codes under management often put industrial assembly lines into difficulty. Berardi’s challenge will therefore be to ensure its customers do not have stock shortages, especially for those who have Kanban supply agreements and who have seen Berardi as the ideal partner to solve internal logistics problems on fasteners. At the same time, we need to look at how to avoid customer price increases – due to increases in raw material costs (steel for instance is up 140% compared to the end of 2020).

All the dynamics described, in addition to the upcoming anti-dumping measures, has led Berardi Group to think that, in the fastener context, the doors could be open to new important opportunities within Europe. With western industry possibly returning to investing large resources in their own countries – generating employment and new value for the territory.

For over 20 years Berardi has believed in the importance of investing in resources; the importance of logistics services; as well as increasingly structuring the know-how made available to customers. Believing that the future will increasingly go in this direction. One of Berardi’s priorities going forward will be to further expand its product range through the Extracomponents division, allowing customers to reduce the number of suppliers and consequently reduce their indirect costs.

Another priority will be to focus on the continuous technological evolution of integrated logistics systems, not necessarily only C-class components. Berardi’s new B-Lean Factory Systems team, specialised in the design of customised Lean services and in the development of new technological drivers, aims to increase the efficiency of the supply flow directly to the customer’s assembly lines – reducing waste and material shortages; avoiding dangerous stock outages and managing production peaks; while at the same time allowing the customer to reduce the stock of material in its warehouse.