Posted on 02/12/2022 8:43:40 AM PST by SaxxonWoods
From whiskey distillers in the humble hills of Kentucky to winemakers in the sunny slopes of California, the demand for glass bottles has outpaced supply this year, a chain reaction triggered, in part, by the coronavirus pandemic.
The world’s supply chain — already lengthy and tangled in the United States — is continuing to bear the brunt of surging consumer demand, labor shortages and overseas manufacturing delays, leading to higher transportation costs and inflation.
David Ozgo, chief economist for the Distilled Spirits Council, said glass shortages are being felt throughout the sector, whether it’s tequila or vodka or whiskey.
“Some of the large distillers, even though they have multiyear contracts for millions of bottles, they’re finding in some instances that they have to pick and choose as to which bottle sizes they’re going to get,”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Maybe they should start paying a dime for returned bottles.
There sure are a lot of products it seems like we could produce in this country. Yes, labor costs more here but it might be worth it.
Hillary Clinton went into a shock coma at the news of the liquor bottle shortage. Stand by for updates on Her Royal Heinous from the Slap-a-Squaw Trauma Center.
Ok that is my breaking point. If the whiskey stops flowing “everything is on the table!”
After a quick web search I was able to find approximately 13 glass bottle manufacturers in the US. None on the west coast, all of them located on the east coast and midwest.
CC
Anyone here on FR experience alcohol shortages in glass bottles last year?
For Easter and Passover 2022, don’t chance it and buy wine from Israel.
Does feel like recycling glass bottles might make a bit of sense. I can remember being a kid and getting coke bottles from the machine that were very worn down from repeated usage.
Anyone here on FR experience alcohol shortages in glass bottles last year?
None that I can see. All my favorite wines are still on the store shelves.
I was wondering why Bob the wino bought an above ground swimming pool.
Use plastic bottles. I hate glass bottles. They break.
Maybe they should start paying a dime for returned bottles.
Michael and Patrick were walking down a Dublin boulevard:
Mike: Did ya’ hear about our friend Seamus who works down t’ the brewery?
Pat: No, what happened?
Mike: ‘E fell into a huuge vat o’ beer and drownded. Took ‘im 8 hours to die!
Pat: Why such a long time?!
Mike: Well, ‘e got out twice t’go to the ‘loo.
Thats why I drink it by the box!
My wife works for a distillery and I figure production costfor her distillary becasue I do commditity futures for fun and profit.
The cost of the bottles has gone up in line with natural gas and transport costs (just more than doubbled). No problem getting US produced 750s if willing to pay twice what they cost Jan 2020. As her employer is penny pencher he ran himeself out of bottles mid 2021 and cut off the profits spiqot in the supply chain. He is also sitting on 12 pallets of hand sanitizer if anyone is interested.
As the bottle costs 30 cents and the grain, yeast, water, spent grain disposal and boiling costs 60 cents, the cardboard packaging might be upwards of a dollar. There is 3 to 5 dollars in labor and overhead. To get a 22 dollar wholesale bottle out the door the bottle is just a public knows about part of delivery of liquor. Profit margins are still in the very high 60s for liquor production. The only industry that is close to that is video card production.
Thanks. Interesting, so the little report from the local vintner is wrong. Apparently we aren’t making enough bottles then, plus supply chain issues.
“Maybe they should start paying a dime for returned bottles.”
One of my duties as a bag boy, (supermarket, not mafia) was to sort the returned soft drink bottles. Finding them full of cockroaches and drug needles was common. I asked one of the soda reps how they were cleaned. He said the process was lengthy and labor intensive. It’s not just rinse them out and reuse them. There were several instances where cleaning fluid was improperly emptied and the bottles got refilled and sold with anywhere from a little fluid, which caused illness and lots of fluid, which caused death. Also, the bottles are either painted or labeled. This has to appear in good condition. Removing paper labels usually causes damage to the bottle making it unattractive. A lot of wine and liquor sales relies on the slickness and attractiveness of their labels. In recent times, the idea of a deposit wasn’t to reuse the bottles. It was to keep them off the sides of the roads. I think you’ll find a dime isn’t worth the effort anymore. It would have to be a dollar or even two. I think this because, when I used to jog passed several school bus stops I’d regularly pick up a dollar or more of change. It wasn’t worth the time for the kids to take change home or even stoop to collect it from the dirt.
Why would she be concerned? Lots of room on the Chappaquq property for a distillery and brewery. Dispense directly from the vats.
“Yep. It fascinates me that the one thing that is not really recyclable in my area is glass bottles. They are just thrown away. Everything else is recyclable in one way or another.”
Our local trash service gives us recycle boxes for glass, aluminum cans and cardboard. I put glass and cans in one and carboard in the other. They pick up every other week.
Funny about the things we make. Everything comes from the ground, and no matter how it’s handled, recycled etc. it all ends up back in the ground eventually, including us.
Except that probe that has left the solar system and our junk on the Moon, Mars etc.
She prefers box wine anyway.
Less cleanup after she pukes herself to unconsciousness.
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