the struggling pound
It's a strange old time for businesses, for us, trying to forecast and predict our required stockholding levels is increasingly challenging. There are just so many market factors at play currently.
We had been increasing our brand new IBC stocks, but these have depleted recently. I think this photo of our third warehouse looks less busy and our numbers tell a similar story. There's a marked shortage of reconditioned IBCs available on the market, possibly the most prolonged dry period we've seen and our waiting lists are growing. More of our reconditioned IBC buyers are using new IBCs, which they typically would have never considered in the past. This change in purchasing behaviour explains our lower stock levels of new product.
I still can’t decide exactly why there's such a shortage of reconditioned stock, but I'm sure the output from UK manufacturing is going to be more appealing on the global market since the GBP has been in freefall. This will likely mean manufacturing will see an uplift in exports, resulting in more IBCs leaving the UK and not entering the reconditioning cycle. In the short term, it looks like we could be entering a famine when it comes to reconditioned IBCs.
What knock on effects are you seeing in your business?
And do you think exports will increase due to the weakened GBP?
