News #011

The new year began with the usual problems of the past year, especially with the unchanged bad situation of the logistics which has actually worsened with the arrival of the Omicron variant: there have been numerous cases of contagion in the ports and among the various ship crews, which obviously caused the reduction of their activities. All this has slowed down and continues to negatively affect logistics, with the consequent impact on the price of raw materials, commodities and in general of all goods traveling by ship.

In addition to the logistics problem, there is also the impact of the Chinese New Year which, starting in a few weeks, will ensure that there is a further stop of activities in Asia. In fact, the lengthening of the timing of this anniversary announced by the Chinese government will certainly have a negative impact on everything that is the Asian production sector.

In this phase, most of the raw materials are in any case produced and stored to meet demand, while the logistical problem remains unchanged.

Speaking of demand, this in Europe remains quite sluggish and prices are extremely high and complex; there is a lot of uncertainty on the market and we will certainly have great difficulty in finding material in these first six months of the year.
The oil trend is quite clear: there is an up trend that can be seen from the forex and the market and this will certainly affect the coming months as well as the strength of the dollar which has greatly increased against the euro.

A real turning point will come with a renewed availability of the material that we see instead to be very limited for the next three months.