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Paintmakers Are Running Out of the Color Blue (bloomberg.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Dutch paint maker Akzo is running out of ingredients to make some shades of blue, the latest fallout from the global supply-chain disruptions that are spreading across manufacturers. From a report: "There is one basic color tint that is extremely difficult to get," Chief Executive Officer Thierry Vanlancker said in an interview Wednesday after publishing third-quarter earnings. "It's creating complete chaos." In addition to the bluish hue, Akzo Nobel is having trouble sourcing the tinplate used to make metal cans, forcing the Amsterdam-based company to ship empty pots from one country to another for filling. It also called a force majeure on deliveries of some exterior wall paints because an additive needed to make them waterproof is unavailable. The supply-chain snarls that have sown disarray across industries are raising prices and creating shortages of some basic household products. Paint makers, which typically rely on hundreds of additives and chemicals, have warned for months of higher costs and logistical issues. Akzo Nobel earlier Wednesday said the spiraling costs and materials shortages will last through the middle of next year.
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Paintmakers Are Running Out of the Color Blue More

Paintmakers Are Running Out of the Color Blue

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  • ... the November elections. It must be a Russian plot.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Anything I don't like is communism, and I don't like this, so this must be communism. Q.E.D.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suss ( 158993 )

      The only november 2021 elections in the Netherlands are about some proposed mergers between towns... I'm not sure what influence blue paint has on these.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        > I'm not sure what influence blue paint has on these.

        Russian PsyOps is most effective when you don't even know it's happening. They got you... they got you good.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Netherlands

        Just don't run out of orange.

    • Dear comrade,
      Due to supply chain issues our latest russian plots are delayed.
      Meanwhile we will be reselling our current supply.
      Make no mistake, these russian plots are of highest quality though they may not arrive in their original packaging.
      Have a nice day and thank you for your patronage.

  • Ah good. Blues always been depressing. Make plenty of red so we can paint towns with it.

  • Reusing containers is good. There is no reason not to have incentives to continue this. There are no safety issues, and we empty cargo ships dead heading to manufacturers anyway.

    And anything that spurs innovation is also good. White paint used to be very toxic and dangerous to make. Now it isnâ(TM)t. There is almost always a better safer solution, if only there is motivation to develop it.

    • Reusing containers is good. There is no reason not to have incentives to continue this. There are no safety issues, and we empty cargo ships dead heading to manufacturers anyway.

      And anything that spurs innovation is also good. White paint used to be very toxic and dangerous to make. Now it isnâ(TM)t. There is almost always a better safer solution, if only there is motivation to develop it.

      I didn't understand it to be container re-use. I understood it to be "we have empties in CountryX but want to fill them in CountryY so we're going to waste shipping capacity relocating the empties." Could be wrong, but that's my read.

  • I never liked blue anyway, so I consider this a win.

  • from the how-about-that dept

    Should be from the "feeling-blue-about-blue dept". Please update!

  • The lameness filter on the submission page is dialled up to 11. Wtf is going on?

  • TheHill 2020: NYC considering using parks as temporary burial sites: city councilman
    TheHill 2021: Unvaccinated people should expect to catch COVID-19 every 16 months
    TheHill 2022: We're running out of colors

    https://thehill.com/homenews/s... [thehill.com]

    https://thehill.com/changing-a... [thehill.com]

  • Blue color has a shocking sad history behind it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @06:48PM (#61915893) Journal
    Before chemical dyes blue came from Lapis lazuli, actually a semi precious stone. India used to export indigo, a plant based dye. East India Company used usury and ruthless enforcement of debt collection to force so much of the land into indigo production, instead of food crops. Resulted in a great famine. Details of the atrocities are shocking. Indigo revolt is probably the seed from which non-violent resistance movements started. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Blue color has a shocking sad history behind it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Thursday October 21, 2021 @07:26PM (#61915975)
      Lapis lazuli / ultramarine is a very interesting pigment. The color center is not a metal, but rather a trisulfur radical, sitting in a zeolite cage. It is formed under some kiln conditions, (leading to the discovery of an inexpensive synthetic) but it also is destroyed at ordinary glaze firing temperatures. Mix up even a low melting glaze with ultramarine, be impressed by the color, then fire and end up with a pale beige shadow: a sad but informative experiment.
    • The British East India Company: If you look at American corporations' crimes against humanity around the world and think, "what a buncha losers, it's like they're not even trying."

      • Yeah, everybody knows that American businesses in the 17th century took a firm stand against inhumane things like slavery.
        Wait.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          The US didn't exist in the 17th century. Perhaps you meant the 18th century but the US barely existed during that either. And if you seriously think the effects of modern companies are as bad as what the British East India Company did, you have a seriously twisted world view. Modern companies are by no means saints but comparing them to an enterprise that gives Stalin a run for his money in terms of brutality is seriously mental. Have some perspective...

          • Modern companies are by no means saints but comparing them to an enterprise that gives Stalin a run for his money in terms of brutality is seriously mental.

            Only if you ignore the larger picture. Corporations have in effect bought up governments, and the governments now handle the military actions while the corporations focus on the economic exploitation. So people are still literally being killed directly to support commerce, while corporations' actions still kill people indirectly as well, and there are still slaves laboring to produce consumer goods under corporate control in some nations.

            TL;DR: The largest corporations are still killing and enslaving people

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            Lets see and keep it on topic and focused on India and US corporations. I raise you the Bhopal disaster

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            Want to repeat that line again about modern companies? Personally I think the person with the seriously twisted world view is yourself.

          • I was trying to point out the ridiculousness of comparing modern companies/organisations to ones that existed 400+ years ago. The world was a very different place back then. I'm not saying that what the EIC did was all fine and dandy because of that, just that the comparison is bad.

            A better approach would be to compare the EIC to their contemporaries, which is what I was trying to do, but at least partly failed at.

            On the subject of modern companies: I do think that a lot of the bad stuff that happened and h

    • Indigo is an interesting pigment as it is the only widely used pigment that is not absorbed into, or chemically linked to, or deposited within the fiber it dyes. It simply adheres to the surface. The only significant use of indigo today is to dye denim, but since denim is a very widely used fabric, a lot of indigo is still used. Indigo is why blue jeans fade - the indigo particle adhering to the surface are gradually removed, especially on surfaces subject to wear.

    • My Name is Indigo Montoya.
      You killed my father.
      Prepare to DYE!

  • It honestly reminds me of watching a hard drive have steadily increasing rates of failure over the course of years, before the drive finally terminates altogether. I am concerned for what the future may hold here.
    • You must be a computer nerd. Heh. Interesting analogy, but were not a hard drive. Were more like a cpu, but from about 500 years in the future, where the circuitry self-adapts, self-repairs, and re-routes around damage. The OS does the same thing. Highly complex, sometimes unstable, but highly adaptable and self-correcting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )
      I bet you are fun at parties. Seriously, I get the feeling you just aren't old enough to see the cycles of society and history. Everything comes full circle. You aren't the first to think the world is ending and you won't be the last. But the world will just keep on turning no matter how you or others feel. Sooner or later you will realize that what is changing isn't society or people, but you and your emotional state. People have been the same forever, ancient Egyptians were just as smart as us. Hum
  • So... do you think companies will start wharehousing more items now that they've seen what a mess things can get into with JIT and a global disruption? Or will they continue to shave a penny here and there and hope for the best, in the name of efficiency?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      I'm sure as soon as the current crisis is over they'll flashy-thing themselves and go back to shaving coins.

      • Either that or pass along the inventory taxes [taxfoundation.org] along to us. I'm sure we will not mind as long as we never run out again.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Or keep their inventory in one of the many states that don't tax inventory.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Or they'll keep their inventory in one of the many states that don't tax inventory.

          Side note, it's funny how many Red states tax inventory.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          Inventory taxes really do seem like a really bad idea if you want to promote local business rather than importing from overseas and if you want stable supply chains. What I find really interesting there is that the states with inventory taxes are Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. 8, 7,14, -7, 20, 3, 9, -3, 4. So, from the list I can find, 5 of those are in the top 10 most Republican states, 2 more are in the top 20 most Republican states. The

  • So paint it white, and in a couple years when the supply chain unclogs, paint over it. Whiners.

    • I presume this is some sort of attempt at a joke, since anyone who's ever painted anything knows that's not realistic.

  • Paint your stuff Orange to get into a Dutch mood.

  • The ancients Greeks didn't know it, it wasn't mentioned neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey. :-)

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