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.

Dr Volker Lederer, managing director

2021 was for sure one of the most challenging years in the fastener business. The demand literally exploded. From a business point of view that was above all positive. However, all our employees have worked hard and to the limit.

In the first half of 2021, there was on one side an exceptionally strong increase in demand. After the economic downturn in the spring of 2020, business awoke to new life in autumn of the same year and suddenly the industry had a great need for fasteners again.

On the other side, stock level fell continuously at the beginning of 2021 due to a very cautious and reduced procurement activity in spring and summer 2020. Especially in the second quarter of 2021 the situation worsened and more and more gaps in the range appeared. Extremely long delivery times, the shortage of containers, and rising freight costs, made it impossible to refill the warehouse in the short term.

Our employees, especially in the sales, purchasing and logistic department, did a fantastic job in that period. Despite the massively increasing workload they worked hard to satisfy our customers; to find solutions with our suppliers; and to process the extraordinarily high volume in our warehouse. All this while most of our commercial employees were working from home, sometimes under difficult Covid-related framework conditions. Not everything worked out, but we as a team were all in all able to successfully manage this challenging phase.

Fortunately, the overheated economic situation has calmed down a bit in the last few months of 2021. But what can we expect for the year 2022?

At present, we see that the container situation has slightly improved. We also notice that freight costs seem to have reached the highest point. Delivery times in the stainless steel business are still long, especially for smaller screws, but we are a little bit optimistic that this will improve in the first half of 2022.

One important target for 2022 is to get back to a normal working situation. Commercial employees working at home is a good measure to protect them from Covid-19 and of course working at home is now part of a modern world of work. It also helps to better combine professional and personal requirements, promotes flexibility, and increases the motivation of many employees. However, we are also increasingly realising the negative effects if employees work often at home. The communication with their colleagues is getting more difficult, internal contacts and relationships suffer and at the end, in some cases, the bond with the company gets weaker. It will be one of the great future challenges to maintain the identification with the company and the loyalty of the employees under the conditions of the modern world of work.

Finally, I believe that the fastener market will, probably, be more balanced in 2022. Against the background of the positive economic forecasts for the European industry in 2022, the fastener demand should remain on a satisfactory level. It can be assumed that the general stock level will rise and that supply chains will step by step work better. However, I am convinced that 2022 will also be a very exciting year in the fastener business.