Supply Chains & Shipping
When it comes to supply chains. Predictability is the name of the game. As we live in a global economy, external events across the world can have big impacts on your supply chain and ability to receive goods on time, in a consistent manner. In the past few years, many events have caused logistical challenges that lead to higher costs and increased shipping lead times, including:
- Covid19 and the closing down of many ocean ports
- Geopolitical conflicts with Russia causing soaring fuel costs
- Inflationary market forces increasing costs
- Natural disasters including floods and fires closing shipping ports
- Worker strikes causing the stoppage of rail routes
Fortunately, The Sweetener House has faced these challenges and developed excellent strategies to overcome them. The Sweetener House supplies global brands and to do so with reliable deliveries has required us to be adaptive. To make sure we always deliver on time, we hold inventory of our most popular sweetener products all around the world at key shipping points. We store goods at warehouses on both the east and west sides of North America. This enables us to deliver to customers across the continent through rail, FTL & LTL freight. Due to unforeseen circumstances, at any given time an outgoing shipment from our production facilities in Asia to our North American shipping points can be delayed because of a number of reasons like detailed above. To counteract this, The Sweetener House consistently buys space on outbound ocean /freights from our manufacturing centers to ensure a steady flow of inventory into our North American warehouses.
To provide our customers with the best prices, we always ship out full container loads. When a customer wants to purchase our sweeteners but isn’t able to receive a full container load, we consolidate shipments from multiple different customers that are ordering less than a full shipping container worth of goods. This ensures there is no wasted space and we get the best shipping rates possible. Not only do we consolidate shipments for better rates, we also have long standing relationships with our shipping partners who offer us discounts based on our high volume shipments. Higher discounts granted to The Sweetener House allow for more cost savings passed on to our customers.
In the rare event that traditional shipping routes such as ocean, rail and truck are inaccessible due to external forces, but our customer needs a critically important product as soon as possible, The Sweetener House has even utilized air freight to deliver goods to our customers in a timely manner.