In 2019, no one in the coatings industry expressed any concern about raw material supplies and availability. Then COVID and the global supply chain crisis hit with a one-two punch and disrupted essentially all aspects of daily life on a global scale, not only for the population at large but for both global industries and governments as well. For two solid years, chaos reigned. We are now more than halfway through 2023, and while both the paint and coatings business—and the raw material supply chain upon which it is built—seem to be back to some semblance of “normal,” what we are experiencing in 2023 is not what we were experiencing in 2019. Not by a long shot.
In 2023, we are heading in the direction of those halcyon days of yore, but not without a number of lingering raw material, logistics, and labor issues. It is true that only a handful of raw materials are difficult to obtain, and the ones that are problematic tend to be special materials used in relatively small quantities by a limited number of coatings producers. Nonetheless, despite the outward appearance of “normality,” there are still issues with raw material production, pricing, transportation, and delivery.