Halfords attributed the 26% drop in bicycle sales in the spring and summer to “serious disruptions” in the global supply chain.
The retailer, which has 404 stores selling bicycles and car kits, said that because the industry “continues to face considerable capacity constraints”, the supply of adult bicycles is particularly low.
These restrictions include difficulty in recruiting a sufficient number of HGV drivers and service technicians, freight disruptions and raw material inflation, as well as limited factory production, making it difficult for manufacturers to adapt to the surge in global demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The company said in the transaction update that it expects many problems to “continue for some time.”
Halfords’ CEO Graham Stapleton said: “Although our bicycle business is currently affected by a severe disruption in the global supply chain, as the largest bicycle retailer in the UK, we have the ability to adapt and provide services to our customers. The long-term prospects of the market are full of confidence.”
After retailers benefited, Halfords’ bicycle sales and related kits fell by 26%. Bicycle boom Last year, commuters and families switched to using two wheels as a way to exercise and travel without using public transportation.
Halfords’ performance marked a shift to automobiles a year after the beginning of the blockade in the UK. Sales of car kits in stores increased by 48%, while trade in the group’s 374 garages increased by nearly 44%. These figures have increased the group’s overall sales by 10.5%.
Halfords is the latest in a series of companies to warn of the shortage of drivers and the difficulties caused by East Asian freight issues.The distribution and availability of shipping containers around the world are out of sync with demand, and many EU truck drivers have returned home since then Brexit Or unable to return to the UK during the pandemic.
Delivered to supermarket, a fast food shop with bookstore Was also affected.
Furniture retailer Dunelm and salad and ready-to-eat food manufacturer Bakkavor also warned that they are facing supply chain disruptions, including more expensive raw materials, higher shipping costs and driver shortages.
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Dunelm said that in the year ended June 26, sales increased by 26.3% to 1.3 billion pounds, and pre-tax profit increased by nearly 45% to 157.8 million pounds, so it is expected that the profit for the coming year will exceed Manchester City’s expectations.
The company stated that transactions in the first 10 weeks of the new fiscal year were better than expected because homeowners continued to update their properties to cope with more work from home and home entertainment.
Bakkavor stated that sales increased by 4% in the six months to the end of June, but warned that it faced “a unique set of challenges in the supply of labor, which also affected the entire supply chain, leading to rising raw material prices and logistics disruptions.”
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said in a speech to the Special Committee of the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday that the global supply shortage caused by the surge in demand for commodities and shipping problems lasted longer than the central bank expected.
“We expect that the bottleneck will resolve itself,” Bailey said, adding that during the pandemic, demand has shifted from services to commodities, pushing up the prices of commodities such as oil, metals and some agricultural products.
