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Supply
Chain by the Numbers |
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- May 27, 2021
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Surprisingly, US eCommerce Share of Retail is Flat; Grocery Delivery Start Up Gorillas to Enter US Market; Chinese Manganese Cartel Sending Prices Soaring; FedEx Struggling with On-Time Performance |
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13.6% |
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| That was the share of ecommerce sales as a percent of overall US retail sales in Q1, according to data released last week from the Census Department. The surprising news: that share is not growing. The Census Bureau data says the share of ecommerce was also 13.6% in Q4 2020 and a bit higher, at 13.8%, in Q3 of last year. The Q1 2021 share of 13.6% was still well above the 11.2% level in Q1 2020, coming off a sharp rise of 39.1% rise in dollar terms. However, the lack of share growth for now two quarters raises some interesting questions about predictions from some pundits for continued rapid growth in on-line sales versus brick & mortar coming out of the pandemic. On-line sales were up 7.7% in Q1 versus Q4, but with total retail sales increasing 7.8% in the quarter, the ecommerce share remained the same. Interesting. |
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| That is the current cost per metric ton of a type of manganese-based product used to strengthen steel, up from $1600 at the beginning of the year. Part of that is surely the result of the rise of most commodity prices in recent months, but it may also be in part the work of the Chinese government to create what in effect is a cartel among disparate manganese processors in the country. And that’s a big deal because China produces more than 90% of the world’s manganese products, including the steel-strengthening additives and battery-grade compounds. The new structure is called a “manganese innovation alliance,” but documents created by the alliances says it will centralize control over supply of key products, coordinate prices and inventory levels, and create networks for mutual financial assistance – just what a cartel does. In good news, the China strategy has spurred manganese development projects across the globe, at least nine of them. |
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87% |
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That was FedEx Ground’s on-time delivery performance from March through mid-April, as surge in parcels from rising ecommerce volumes and strong levels of B2B shipments in a healthy economy simply have been beyond its network capacity. That according to data analysis from parcel software vendor ShipMatrix released this week. UPS appears to in better shape, with an on-time rate of 95% over the same period, according to ShipMatrix’s numbers. Delivery-tracking software company Convey comes up with somewhat different numbers, finding FedEx deliveries were 71% on-time in April, compared with UPS at 88% and the U.S. Postal Service at 90%. A FedEx spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the company doesn’t endorse any third-party data provider and that Convey’s numbers haven’t historically aligned with the shipper’s internal figures. Last year, FedEx began delivering the packages that it had been dropping at post offices for last mile delivery, in an attempt to increase the density of stops along FedEx Ground routes. Some say that change is impacting delivery performance. |
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That’s how many minutes German start-up Gorillas promises to deliver groceries in within the markets it serves, which seems almost impossible to SCDigest but we will take it on faith. Now, the company is entering the US market on May 30, with service in parts of Brooklyn, with plans to expand to Manhattan in June. It plans to launch delivery in other major US cities by the end of the summer. All that from a press announcement from the company this week. The company is operating successfully across many areas of Europe currently. The key: Gorillas operates various micro warehouses in each neighborhood it serves, which allows much great order picking speed versus fulfilling orders from a grocery store. Among its features: the Gorillas app mirrors a trip to the supermarket, with virtual aisles organized as how they would be in physical aisles to enable easy browsing. 