Due to the impact of Hurricane Helene on the Baxter I.V. fluid manufacturing plant, non-essential surgeries such as my angiogram 10/16/24 have been canceled.
Hopefully the problem will be resolved by 11/6/24 when the angiogram was rescheduled. Fortunately, Hurricane Milton didn’t damage the Florida Baxter plant.
Wendy
This is similar to the baby formula shortage after Abbott had contamination problems. Over concentration in the hands of a few large plants means shortages if any problem causes a shut down.
Better to have more diversification of plant sites to be more resilient.
Is this an antitrust issue? Did FTC allow too much concentration in the industry? Should market share be limited? Minimum of three suppliers? None with over 50% share?
Making plastic bags is a low-margin business. The manufacturing has consolidated for obvious economic pressures.
DB2
Interesting comment. Meeting sterile requirements and quality are probably top priority.
And you are shipping mostly water. You would think regional operations would be more efficient.
If the production costs nationwide were fairly uniform, then that makes sense. But those costs vary widely, depending on which item(s) are more expensive in each area. Cheap water in MI/WI–$200 license for all the water you want each year. Central location for central and northern US and even into Canada. Hmmmm, what about Canada as a location? Don’t know, but crossing the border is not hard via car/truck. Mostly traffic issues.
Winter not a real issue here as we deal with it every year. They are NOT shipping “just water”, so the freezing point may be well below 32F/0C.
West coast could be issue for water (maybe skip CA as a site? More northern states, esp WA/OR and maybe BC in Canada).
Various issues in New England–water (?) and shipping. So make in outstate NY/PA/etc (avoid city problems/high costs) and ship to rest of region from that point.
Companies probably go through all of this when making decisions.
Before FedEx many companies had regional warehouses and inventory to supply customers needs. Some even had regional manufacturing.
Each site has overhead and extra inventory costs you.
Its most efficient to fill a plant to capacity and run it 24/7. But that gives little flexibility to deal with the unexpected like storm damage.
Is storm damage a black swan? Shouldn’t a well managed company have a backup plan. Some idle capacity for the unexpected?
The plants just ship bags because water is heavy. The pouches are filled later (regionally).
DB2
Which was the Baxter plant with storm damage? Manufacturing bags or filling them?
If they have multiple filling sites, must be bag manufacturing.
The interview I heard seems to be incorrect. The North Carolina plant also does filling.
DB2
The FDA has indicated the IV bag shortage will last until March.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/supply-chain/shortage-of-iv-containers-expected-to-last-until-march-fda.html
DB2