COVID-19 Bulletin: March 26

Good Afternoon,

More COVID-19 news that is relevant to the plastics industry:

Supply

• Most suppliers continue to operate without interruption.
• LyondellBasell suspended its March PE increase, joining Exxon, Nova and Formosa in deferring March increases.
• Prices for commodity resins in Asia are falling.
• Plummeting energy demand has upended Russia’s plans to ramp up production in a price war with Saudi Arabia; despite the news, oil prices fell early Thursday.

Supply Chain

• Truckers are struggling with the sudden shift in freight demand, which is upending normal routing; shipments to grocery and discount stores was up 50% last week.
• All our Gold Standard logistics and transportation partners are operating without interruption.
• We’ve seen no changes in the status of ports:

Markets

• After late delays yesterday, the Senate passed a bipartisan $2 trillion economic rescue package, which now goes to the House of Representatives.
• Unemployment filings soared to 3.3 million, nearly five times the previous weekly record.
• Twenty-one states now have imposed stay-at-home orders, affecting more than 200 million people.
• Ford issued restart dates for some North American plants as soon as April 6.
• Our Healthcare team is working hard to keep up with a surge in activity:
  • High demand is forcing some medical OEMs to go outside of their established manufacturing supply chains, including idled automotive plants and non-medical molders, to produce personal protective equipment (PPE), swabs and other products in short supply.
  • PP fiber grades are in high demand for hospital gowns and masks.
  • PC, nylon and other engineering resins are in high demand for medical PPE and ventilators.
  • PE and PP demand is high for medical, food and staples packaging.
  • We have received inquiries from Europe due to supply constraints for certain resins.
  • Our resin demand for labware products is nearly three times the average monthly rate.
  • The FDA is cutting red tape to give states more authority for testing protocols.
• We’ve seen some clients close under state-ordered essential-business-only mandates and reopen after petitioning for essential status.
• Demand for 3D Printing filaments have soared.
• We have reports of delays and extended lead times for tooling from Asia and elsewhere.

International

• Concern is growing about the outlook for developing nations, which are less equipped to deal with the spread of COVID-19.
• Ecuador has imposed a curfew from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. until April 5.
• Peru will extend its state of national emergency for 13 more days until April 12.

Our Operations

• Nine of our top ten ship-to states are now under essential-business-only mandates.
• M. Holland is open for business, deemed essential and will continue to operate at full capacity. We have issued the following status statement:

In accordance with the guidance provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), M. Holland Company is considered a member of a critical infrastructure industry and will therefore remain operative. As such, with any necessary accommodations made to ensure the health and safety of our staff and business partners, we will continue to fully perform our normal business operations.

Thank you,

M. Holland Company

We will provide further COVID-19 bulletins as circumstances dictate. For all COVID-19 updates and notices, please refer to the M. Holland website.