Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1392944
20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2021 Feature Interview by Nolan Johnson I-CONNECT007 Nolan Johnson speaks with Joe D'Ambrisi of MacDermid Alpha to gain insight into what he's seeing in the market from his perspective as a specialty chemicals and materials provider. Nolan Johnson: MacDermid Alpha touches so many different parts of the electronics manu- facturing industry. Overall, what does MacDer- mid Alpha see with respect to pricing changes? Joe D'Ambrisi: I'm sure your readers are very fa- miliar with the current disruption in the sup- ply chain. It's apparent in not just the electron- ics industry, but in a host of other industries as well. We are certainly not insulated from a lot of the issues that we see in the supply chain. As primarily a specialty chemicals and materials provider, we're most interested and concerned with the chemical markets where there has been a significant amount of disruption, which can be traced to a number of different factors. First, we're still feeling the impacts of the Tex- as freeze in February, where some of the basic commodity chemistry producers of ethylene and propylene are located. ose commodity chemicals are the building blocks for many of the specialty chemicals that MacDermid Alpha uses to produce its products. When you think of all the applications for specialty chemicals in not just the electron- ics industry, but in many different industries around the world, we're actually a relative- ly small consumer of those specialty chemi- cals. While we have seen significant price im- pacts as a result of some supply and demand pressures in the industry, we have maintained a supply of every critical raw material that we need to produce products for our customers. To help us mitigate the potential impacts of being relatively small consumers of these spe- cialty chemical raw materials, we have a global supply chain that is very well interconnected, and we have a program of providing both pri- mary and secondary raw material sources for our most critical raw materials. When you're globally connected, and you have primary and secondary access to these Feeling the Supply Chain Squeeze