Discover WSSA's Expertise on Global Supply Chain Constraints in WSD's Article

In case you missed the Bar Convent event last week, Wine & Spirits Daily published an excellent recap of the Global Supply Chain Constraints panel, which featured WSSA’s own Managing Director, Alison Leavitt; Chris Song, National Sales Manager, Green River Spirits Company; and Monique Huston, VP, Spirits Portfolio, Winebow.

In their article titled “Grokking Global Supply Chain Constraints” WSD outlined the panel’s ideas and thoughts on the status of the industry. WSD reported, “ 'Everything that could go wrong is going wrong,' said Alison. WSSA is seeing equipment problems, huge delays, no new capacity, late ordering of containers, and thus, lack of visibility for planning. Not to mention, other issues that, normally, would not be a huge deal, are making the situation worse. That includes fires on ships, storms, labor shortage and strikes."

WSD also featured Monique’s perspective as she “showed a picture of just how backed up one port is, with 64 ships sitting in Long Beach a few months ago with a 15-day wait time (as opposed to just 1-2 days). And each ship carries about 10,000 containers. 'The liquid goods are there, the problem is nobody has glass, paper, cans,' etc., she added."

The article also shared Chris’ thoughts as "he has had 'lots of difficult conversations as charges increase.' And he doesn’t 'think they’ll go away anytime soon,' leading to a higher shelf retail price."

All three speakers provided advise: "Alison said you have to 'control what you can,' meaning planning for additional costs, factoring in delays, and working with reliable companies. And Chris emphasized that it’s 'absolutely imperative to be flexible and have a plan B, and in these times a plan C, D, E…' Monique echoed the sentiment."

The panel went on to make predictions on how long this challenging situation will last, and how to find the silver linings during these times.

The full recap article by WSD is linked here. We thank them for publishing such a comprehensive report and bringing the panel speakers’ words of expertise to light.