PROCUREMENT
Supply chain
reaction
With customers demanding more and more high-quality cleaning products than ever before, cleaning industry suppliers are having to navigate global supply chain disruptions to deliver the goods. Words Cameron Cooper
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The ability to think outside the square in procurement is really important.
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44 INCLEAN NEW ZEALAND August 2021
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hen looking after his clients’ needs, Specialist Cleaning Supplies manager David Berry makes a point of ensuring that he always goes to them with solutions rather than problems. The approach is paying off for the business at a time when pandemic-related procurement challenges are often making it difficult to deliver some popular cleaning products. “The ability to think outside the square in procurement is really important,” Berry says. “It’s not good enough for us to say we don’t have a product. We must have already thought of an alternative that will do the same job and have that available. It’s our job to find what clients need.” Based in Palmerston North, Specialist Cleaning Supplies provides everything from commercial vacuum cleaners, scrubber dryers and sweepers to cleaning equipment, chemicals, paper products and even tea and coffee supplies. Berry says the business has been prepared to hold much higher levels of stock than normal to act as a buffer against import delays. “You’ve just got to have stock and in some respects, irrespective of what you have to pay to get that stock, you still have to have product to supply.”
Specialist Cleaning Supplies has also been quick to respond to market trends. A case in point is the decision last year to purchase considerable stocks of gloves at a time when they were in demand because of the COVID-19 outbreak. “We bought all the gloves we could, so we had stock and it meant that our prices weren’t as volatile as some others.”
TESTING TIMES Supply chains and procurement processes have been seriously tested during the pandemic, with border closures and lockdowns leading to more red tape and, in some instances, complex customs clearances. Some freight-forwarding organisations have also reported five-fold hikes in freight prices as a result of container shortages and bottlenecks out of nations such as China and the United States. However, smart players in the cleaning industry have prided themselves on being able to deliver. Craig Newton, national manager of RapidClean New Zealand, says strong local networks and knowledge have allowed the business’s members to keep reliably supplying innovative and alternative product choices as required during COVID-19.