Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1392944
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2021 D'Ambrisi: From our perspective, because the size of the North American printed circuit board fabrication and assembly markets is rel- atively small compared to the overall global markets, we're able to serve these smaller cus- tomers and meet their needs. If we have supply chain disruptions in North America, we make those same products, just in larger quantities, in Asia that we can put on a boat and send to our American customers if we have to. at will help us make sure these customers are served and served well. So, I expect that sup- ply, at least from a specialty chemical and ma- terial standpoint of MacDermid Alpha, won't be an issue for them. Johnson: Sounds like one of the things Mac- Dermid Alpha can offer your customers is the resilience in your own supply chain? D'Ambrisi: at's exactly right. It's one of the benefits of having the scale and scope that we've talked about and having a global net- work of manufacturing locations and raw ma- terial sourcing. Johnson: As you said, there's not a whole lot of complexity in chemicals compared to semi- conductor manufacturing. Nevertheless, is this an opportunity for MacDermid Alpha to look for ways to implement continuous improve- ment? D'Ambrisi: is is something that's always top of mind for us. We've been in the middle of a sup- ply chain optimization exercise ever since we put the six legacy organizations together into one organization. ese were former compet- itive companies that had very similar product portfolios, very similar manufacturing foot- prints in some respect, and we've had to con- tinually optimize that supply chain. And that's been an ongoing challenge for us for close to five years now, ever since Elements Solutions acquired both MacDermid and Alent, which represent the MacDermid, Alpha and Enthone brands. We've since acquired assets of the OM Group, Kester, and Hitech, a regional suppli- er of specialty adhesives in Asia. All of this has created significant overlap in our supply chain that we've been optimizing ever since. ese current supply chain disruptions are just an- other hurdle in that. It's another opportunity to up our game in terms of supply chain opti- mization, and we believe that there's still op- portunity for us to continue to do that. We've had the opportunity to identify, in some cases, critical raw materials that were not efficiently sourced and potentially single- sourced. We have made a big effort at making sure that we don't have single-source raw mate- rials, that there is always an alternative source that is approved by our customers, acceptable to our customers and to us that we can provide. With that comes a level of competition in our raw material suppliers that, we believe, will help hold down prices in the long term. Johnson: What are your customers concerned about? D'Ambrisi: We're not the biggest source of con- cern for them right now, but if you're getting a visit from your laminate supplier several times over the first two quarters of the year with a projected price increase, that has to be con- cerning for a printed circuit board fabricator. I'm interested to understand—and we ask our customers this all the time—how are they pass- ing those costs on? We believe this is part of a general inflationary trend that ultimately will be borne by the end consumer. ere's little way around that. It will be several years before we get to a much more fully competitive sup- ply chain environment than we are in today, where demand will stabilize, and supply will improve and increase. Johnson: ere has been a lot of downward pressure on pricing, squeezing the margins from consumer prices all the way back up the supply chain to the PCB fabricators, the com-