Please keep talking to Huhtamaki about the leadtime they need for the foil laminates. My understanding is they bring foil in especially for us, and leadtimes can be quite long – 2 months at least to get the foil, then they need to laminate. We have been working on 3 months minimum from order to guaranteed receipt of laminate. This means that if you order now, you won’t receive it until September, and we have to take it in Nov.
The reason for our concern is the forecast demand, which is being driven by the sales forecast, showing increasing sales of the foil bags. This forecast is also used a lot by finance and Simon to determine the sales value we expect each month, so having forecasts that are not going to happen does cause a lot of issues as these are corrected. (I’m sure you’ve seen Jenny’s analysis of what’s changed each time the forecast loads.). If the season so far is expected to continue for another 6 months, you need to reflect that in the forecast. The forecast is not the budget – it is the best guess based on our latest knowledge of the customers and their situation. (Though we are expected to explain why we varied from budget, and manage our business to cope with the effects of variation).
Your last pineapple season was not good, with the shortage and subsequent high price of fruit. The question is – what is likely to happen over the next 6, 12 18 months? I think it takes 12 months for plants to fruit? So plants going in now, or over the last few months won’t fruit until 2016? Or are there new crops that will come into fruit for the second half of 2015 and boost the demand for our bags? And are the crops in Kenya doing better, so DMK might take more bags to make up for the shortage in Thailand? On the other hand, coconut products have soared (but use different materials so don’t help move foil laminates). Where are they heading – further up, level off, or drop?
We walk a delicate path between having just the right amount of laminate (using Huhtamaki’s stock-holding), having too much (like right now for foils), or running out(like where we are heading on P6). The sales forecast is our key guide in determining the levels of stock we will commit to.