Market Update

June 2020

Dear Valued Customer,

First and foremost, Foodlinx would like to thank you for your continued support during the past couple of months. Our staff is grateful for your patronage and patience during these trying times. We strive daily to meet your needs at the highest possible service level available to Foodlinx.

As an ongoing update, we would like to share some information with you. In the past few weeks, our strategic supply partners have tried to keep us abreast of their challenges. Some of the challenges are plant closures, raw material shortages, while others are increased domestic consumer demand.

Domestic Ice Cream consumption in May is up 40% over traditional July/August sales, which tend to be the highest volume months each year. As a result, ice cream manufacturers have not been able to supply enough to meet the domestic demand much less export orders.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Clorox and Reckitt Benckiser (Lysol) claim consumer demand for disinfectants is over 400% of annual sales. Both brand owners don’t expect to meet domestic demand until late July in a best case scenario. P&G has made similar statements regarding Charmin brands. An additional challenge to the system, are retail channels that previously didn’t carry these items have now entered into the fray further straining the supply chain. As a result, our main retail grocery and frozen retail supplier, Super Store Industries, has received, at best, a fraction of the normal supply.

On the protein side, retail packed products remain difficult to obtain due to increased domestic demand at retail level. Production plant closures, labor shortages and lack of raw materials have slowed the supply chain considerably. The chicken and pork industries have made production cutbacks that will create challenges on some aspect for many months to come. In general, the protein industries had to make very tough decisions to get to their needed cutbacks. It remains a tough row to hoe for the industry.

We continue to seek additional supply sources to keep product moving in your direction. In these efforts we are focused on quality products that you are used to. We will also keep you informed of any product changes, price advances and give you options whenever we can. We do apologize if there are shortages we can’t overcome. Our Sales Team, will keep you informed about shortages, and space available, in order to find additional product to maximize your containers.

We always look forward to your feedback. It is important for us to know how we are doing. We want to hear your concerns or frustrations and will do everything possible to resolve any issue within our power. Please don’t hesitate to contact anyone in Foodlinx to address your concerns.

Once again, from the entire Foodlinx team, we thank you for your continued support! We are committed to providing the best possible service we can during these challenging times. If we can assist you in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us.

– The Foodlinx Team