CLEANING CONSUMABLES
Winning
the hygiene war Words Cameron Cooper New Zealand cleaning industry operators are relying on smart manufacturing, inventory and product strategies to succeed as global forces continue to disrupt the cleaning consumables space.
28 INCLEAN NEW ZEALAND May 2022
T
he Ukraine-Russia conflict is the latest challenge that is putting pricing pressure on cleaning consumables in the New Zealand market. With many consumables – such as buckets and brushware through to dispenser bottles and chemical containers – using petroleum-based plastics for their manufacture or packaging, the disruption to oil supplies coming out of sanction-hit Russia is having serious flow-on effects for the price of goods. “The cost of products has gone up,” says Ebin Sebastian, managing director of NZ Cleaning Supplies. With supply-chain bottlenecks and shipping container shortages out of the United States and Europe also affecting freight charges, Sebastian
estimates wholesale prices for a range of his business’s products will increase by 5 per cent to 12 per cent.“But we’re not sitting here and doing nothing about it,” he says. “We’re negotiating as much as we can with the manufacturers. They understand that they have to sell their products at the right price, otherwise it won’t be good for anyone in the industry.” The goal is to prevent or minimise any price hikes for customers down the supply chain. For NZ Cleaning Supplies, one of its secret weapons is a large warehouse in Ellerslie that enables it to fine-tune inventory control and partially evade being at the mercy of freight cost spikes. “We have the storage space we need,” Sebastian says. “And we’re constantly monitoring stock each day and talking to our customers.”