Prices for various products have surged in the past few months as specific issues continue to affect manufacturers and global supply chains. Now, fireworks are the latest product to experience a surge in pricing. According to new reporting, businesses that solely sell fireworks are being forced to raise their prices, simply as they have no choice but to do so.
This is for a variety of reasons. Mainly, the increase in prices for fireworks has to do with the global supply chain issues that have yet to be accurately solved. For many, fireworks are Chinese-made goods, and the global shipping backlog for these items has forced businesses in America to raise prices by about 15-35% this year.
Already, Americans have faced a surge of price hikes for services and goods, including for airfare and rental cars this summer holiday weekend. Price surges may not go away anytime soon, especially if the price has increased because of supply chain problems. Many analysts confirm that these global supply chain issues likely won’t go away or be solved until well into 2022. This summer holiday season, Americans will have to experience these price hikes — but it looks like consumers will also have to deal with these problems during the Christmas and winter holiday season.
Many firework businesses are finding that they have to pay quite a lot more this year for fireworks than last year. For example, last year it could cost about $10,000 – $13,000 per shipping container. This year, it costs more than $30,000 per shipping container of fireworks — and it appears these numbers are continuing to rise.
Supply chain issues are still causing issues, too. Some firework shipments are even stuck at many U.S. ports, even though the holiday weekend is right around the corner. Transit times to receive purchased shipments have also been problematic, as some firework businesses explain that their shipments have taken up to three months to arrive, where it normally took only about a month.
All of these issues come amid firework shortages that many businesses are facing. Last year, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, firework sales skyrocketed to 404.5 million pounds purchased. In 2019, only 273 million pounds of fireworks were purchased, in comparison. Normally, many businesses have a lot of fireworks leftover from the year before which helps keep their inventory in stock. But this year, because of the mass amount of fireworks sold last year, there isn’t that extra inventory that many businesses are used to.
However, many professional companies that put on firework shows or displays aren’t necessarily having the issues that individual consumers are. Last year, because of the pandemic, many firework shows were canceled. Therefore, many of these companies still have a large inventory of fireworks, so these shows can hopefully go on this year, where they couldn’t last year!
As the world hurries to get back to normal now that many are becoming fully vaccinated, there are still some major issues with the global supply chain that will only seem to cause problems well into the future. Economists don’t see these issues being solved until well into 2022 — which means 2022’s Fourth of July just might have the same problems experienced this year.
