Shanghai enterprises have a bumpy road to resume work

Economic Observer reporter Wang Yajie raw materials are urgent, logistics are urgent, and downstream sales are urgent.

For the subsidiaries of central enterprises in Shanghai, local state-owned enterprises and upstream and downstream private enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta region, they are all looking forward to the signal of resumption of work and production.

In the view of Ding Wenlong, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. Shanghai Visteon Automotive Electronic System Co., Ltd., his company has not yet ushered in the real sense of resumption of work and production: "The biggest problem in resuming work and production is how to get people from home, from the community to the factory, and how to open up the problem of logistics blockages." ”

Zhang Yuyan, general manager of Sinopec Chemical Sales East China Branch (hereinafter referred to as "Huahua East China"), revealed that the company is increasing the number of waterway distribution vessels and urgently opening up one of the important bulk chemical raw materials - PTA waterway shipping process to ensure the supply of raw materials.

Xiang Yongze, sales director of China Salt Shanghai, said that in the face of the reality of "large-package salt sales have been greatly resisted, sales have dropped by 60-70%", the company is urgently adjusting the mode of transportation, through water transportation and railways to try to solve logistics problems.

More and more companies are joining the ranks of resuming work and production.

On April 25, 26 and 27, the Economic Observer reporter talked with a number of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises in Shanghai, inquired about the problem of resuming work and production, and made a portrait of them in the context of the epidemic.

Chip shortage

Time back to March 23, Ding Wenlong's auto parts company - also a downstream enterprise of auto chip production - Shanghai Visteon Automotive Electronic System Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shanghai Visteon) began emergency sealing.

On the day of the sealing, Shanghai Weishitong urgently transferred 160 people into the factory to implement closed-loop management and resident work, including production employees, auxiliary employees, logistics supply chain employees, manufacturing process employees, 2 managers, as well as security cleaning and canteen staff. At the same time, the company urgently purchased sleeping bags, mattresses, shower facilities and other daily necessities for the resident employees.

Facts have proved that Visteon Shanghai's prediction is correct. Only 5 days later, Shanghai Pudong ushered in a comprehensive lockdown, and Shanghai Visteon's choice on the 23rd laid the foundation for the smooth resumption of work and production. The reason for the above judgment lies in the experience of responding to the epidemic in Wuhan.

Ding Wenlong recalled: "During the epidemic period, the most feared thing is that the supply chain will be interrupted, after the outbreak in Wuhan, although we are not in Wuhan, but it will be our customers in Wuhan, the supply chain will be interrupted, and our production will be tentative, which is the same as the Shanghai epidemic." ”

In addition to the preparation of personnel, Shanghai Visteon also prepared some materials including electrical components in its inventory, and the production capacity was maintained at about 40% of the usual level. Ding Wenlong said: "There is no epidemic when the machine does not rest, about 400 people in shifts, now can only open a day shift, the equipment is not full, the epidemic caused the main engine factory passive reduction plan, there are many suppliers in Shanghai, some supplier factories such as United Electronics have appeared positive forced to close, the earliest caused the main engine factory shortage of materials." Therefore, our guarantee of supply and production is a relative sense of insurance and protection of property. ”

From the perspective of the industrial chain, Shanghai Visteon is the head enterprise in automotive electronics, ranking second in the world in instrument shipments, saic motor group, Tesla and other enterprises belong to its downstream enterprises, automotive chip enterprises belong to its upstream enterprises.

From the perspective of the entire automotive industry chain, the relevant downstream enterprises of Shanghai Visteon, including Tesla, are basically still in a semi-suspended state. Ding Wenlong said that the impact of the epidemic in Shanghai is very large, and as soon as the epidemic occurs, it will affect the entire Chinese automotive industry.

For more than a month, although the domestic business has been affected, 40% of Visteon Shanghai's business is exported to foreign countries: "The impact of this piece is very small, because its supply chain is not all in China, production is still continuing, we are mainly exporting to Europe, North America and Japan." ”

On the issue of automotive chip shortage, Ding Wenlong believes: "Electronic companies are my suppliers, mainly my chip manufacturers, the chip impact is very large, chip manufacturers are our bottleneck, as early as 2020 began to be short, 21 years of evolution is very intense, with the comprehensive impact of the epidemic continues, this year is more difficult than 2021." ”

Judging from the situation in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, due to the impact of the epidemic, factories in Malaysia will choose to close factories. In addition, due to the increase in the number of people in home isolation, consumer electronics will increase, so the chips that supply consumer electronics will crowd out production capacity. For example, TSMC's production capacity of this line originally produced 1 million chips a week, 800,000 for consumer electronics, 200,000 for automotive electronics, and now the consumer electronics chips have reached 900,000, and cars have become 100,000, and the supply shortage has further intensified.

Secondly, from the perspective of the automotive industry itself, there are more and more new energy vehicles, and more and more automotive chips are used, with the increase of intelligence and electrification, the amount of chip bicycles has also increased, and there are changes in the international situation, which together lead to the limitation of chip production capacity.

As a result, Ding Wenlong said: "For us, our automotive electronics companies are most affected by chips, resulting in enterprises not being able to start all of them. "As of now, Visteon Shanghai has not ushered in a real sense of resumption of work and production.

Statistics show that the company has 7 production lines to resume normal production, 6 SMD production lines have 4 normal production, the resumption of production is the 160 people mentioned above.

If you want to fully resume work and production, the biggest problem is how to get people from home, from the community to the factory, and how to open up logistics blockages.

These are not without solutions. During the epidemic, in order to maintain continuous production, Visteon Shanghai successfully applied for the relevant transportation permits within the Pudong New Area, because the instruments they produced were used for negative pressure ambulances, medical waste transport vehicles and NEW CROWN vaccine transport vehicles, and the number of confirmed patients per day was about 20,000, which gave birth to the demand for the above transfer and the market supply demand of Visteon Shanghai.

In the whole operation process, the Kangqiao Town People's Government, the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Administration Bureau and the Pudong New Area Government are more supportive of Shanghai Visteon's resumption of work and production, Ding Wenlong described the Shanghai grass-roots government as the positioning of "shop small two", indicating that it has provided a certain degree of support in the whole logistics and the guarantee of epidemic prevention work.

Judging from the situation of upstream and downstream private enterprises, "they have not yet resumed work and production, and we must wait until we resume work and production before we can drive our upstream enterprises to resume work and production." ”

In order to promote the resumption of work and production as soon as possible, Visteon Shanghai has declared the second batch of "white list" for the resumption of work and production in Shanghai.

Logistics are blocked

The obstructed logistics put pressure on Xiang Yong, sales director of China Salt Shanghai Company, to work.

Statistics show that the sales of large-package salt in Shanghai Salt Industry have been greatly resisted, and sales have dropped by 60-70%.

Xiang Yong introduced to the Economic Observer reporter: "Our salt sales are divided into online and offline, the operation is still working after the online sealing control, the obstruction is still logistics, the impact on us is relatively large, such as Jingdong Tmall supermarket delivery blocked, Shanghai vehicles in the past can not be received, many supermarkets or online e-commerce warehouses, are in Kunshan, Jiangsu or Jiaxing Pinghu, Zhejiang, logistics is particularly affected." ”

After the lockdown of Shanghai, the entire road transport was cut off, shanghai salt industry can only be transported through water transport and railway, Xiang Yong said: "We have a lot of salt enterprises in the Salt Group, zhongyan Jintan in Changzhou, Jiangsu Is the most important supplier of Shanghai salt industry, basically rely on shipping, in addition to Hubei, Jiangxi, Xinjiang salt factories come by railway, water transport containers, etc., at present, our salt supply has not been interrupted, "

In addition, in addition to Shanghai, suppliers in some surrounding areas have also been affected by the epidemic prevention and control recently, such as in Changzhou, Jiangsu, Lianyungang and Chuzhou, Anhui, where local prevention and control measures have led to the suspension of production and logistics interruptions of supplier enterprises, which has a greater impact on the continuity and stability of production plans.

Chen Rui, director of the Marketing Department of China Salt Shanghai, said that since the implementation of the sealing and control management on April 1, "the impact on us and customers is quite large, but fortunately, in the early stage, we made some preparations for the pressure warehouse, but when the epidemic came, most of the original circulation links were interrupted, from supermarkets and e-commerce to consumers. At the same time, orders for salt for food processing have shrunk sharply, down about 60%, and the production of many downstream salt customers has been greatly affected. ”

In order to cope with the difficulties of logistics obstruction, Shanghai Salt Industry has chosen the mode of transportation from land to water and road to rail. This first requires suppliers to organize production as soon as possible in accordance with the procurement plan of Shanghai Salt Industry, and after the production is completed, then communicate and coordinate all aspects of logistics, including the use of railway transportation, increase water transportation, maximum transportation and supply assurance, during this period, it is also necessary to do vehicle transportation passes and other procedures, and it is necessary to continuously mobilize and coordinate internal and external resources of the enterprise. At the same time, due to the emergency transport guarantee and the readjustment of conventional modes of transport, the rise in transportation costs will cause an increase in procurement costs, and Shanghai Salt Industry currently takes ensuring adequate supply, price stability and quality as the primary goal, and digests the adverse effects of rising costs.

This is not the first time that Shanghai's salt industry has faced difficulties with the epidemic.

Xiang Yong introduced that as early as 2020, the company experienced a wave of consumers rushing during the epidemic. He said: "Salt is a people's biological resource, whenever there is an emergency, consumer demand for salt will be very strong, in early March Shanghai new crown cases increased, we let the business personnel and supermarket procurement in advance to communicate, in advance to prepare goods, to prevent out-of-stock." After several waves of large epidemics came out in late March, there was a rush to buy and sell too fast, at that time there was no lockdown, it was replenished as much as possible, to meet the needs of consumers to buy salt, the demand for group purchases in early April was not strong, the real exuberance was from the middle of the month. ”

Whether it is to deal with the wind and grass in early March, or to deal with the rush to buy after mid-to-late March, Shanghai Salt industry is running ahead.

In response to the unexpected situation during the epidemic, Shanghai Salt Industry Company has called all the non-staple food condiment partners and retailers in the jurisdiction one by one to record and summarize the customer's warehouse inventory preparation, sealing and distribution status.

In addition, the way of delivery has quietly changed. Zhongyan in Shanghai transport vehicles are large trucks, it is impossible to send to every household, they began to dock with the account manager of the supermarket in order to directly dock customers, through them to carry out group purchases, such as joint Shanghai Yonghui, Wal-Mart, Carrefour to cover the store, or through the local community neighborhood committee, when distributing civilian biological resources, add a bag of salt in it, through the above ways to meet market demand.

Through the upstream and downstream situation, the upstream enterprise of Shanghai's salt industry, a person in charge of a chemical private enterprise in Shanghai, said that their company is the first batch of guaranteed supply enterprises (the first batch of whitelist enterprises in Shanghai to resume work and production), mainly producing pharmaceutical intermediate chemical products, and the company Fengxian District is currently in the state of resuming work and production.

The main difficulty faced by the private enterprise in resuming work and production is that Shanghai belongs to the sealing and control area, logistics are not smooth, and the raw materials for production materials are all imported from other provinces, and at present, they can only be transferred to Shanghai from other provinces to apply for epidemic prevention materials passes to meet production. The person in charge said: "At present, many raw materials still cannot come in, including some companies are also in the state of sealing and stopping production, and can only meet the production of existing projects." ”

As of now, the production capacity of the private enterprise has recovered more than half.

The Economic Observer reporter also learned that in order to further promote its resumption of work and production, Shanghai Salt Industry also declared the second batch of "white list" of Shanghai resumption of work and production.

Sales declined

Before answering the reporter's call, Yun Hong, general manager of the planning department of Shanghai Petrochemical, had just finished a special logistics communication meeting. "It's still a logistics problem." Yun Hong said bluntly: "If the products we produce do not have the headquarters to help coordinate transportation, we have increased the warehouse and stopped production." ”

For Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical, in addition to logistics problems, there are also disruptions to the entire quarterly production and operation plan and overhaul plan.

Yun Hong told the Economic Observer reporter that the current consumption of refined oil and chemical products basically tends to stagnate, on the one hand, after the epidemic control in Shanghai, the travel demand and logistics have decreased sharply, and the sales of refined oil products have plummeted, almost to 0, and the challenge is very large.

In addition, Yun Hong said: "Our refined oil and other liquid products have no way to store in large quantities, and when they are produced, they will be sold, chemicals including basic chemicals and synthetic resins and other products, because downstream enterprises have stopped working, our products are not sold, logistics has a very large impact on us, and the surrounding cities take strict control measures for vehicles from and through Shanghai, resulting in a significant decline in logistics efficiency, resulting in product inventory." ”

Li Zhurong, deputy general manager of Shanghai Petrochemical Sales Center, said that on the whole, the price of crude oil in the market has been rising since the beginning of this year, but the prices of bulk materials and downstream products have not risen synchronously, and the operation of enterprises has been under greater pressure. Since March, the upstream and downstream industries have been seriously affected by the epidemic, facing problems such as raw materials cannot come in, products cannot go out, inventory is high, and capital turnover is difficult.

In addition to the above problems, the overhaul of some of the refining units of Shanghai Petrochemical, which was originally scheduled to be carried out on May 8, was also delayed due to the epidemic. Yun Hong said: "This involves two aspects of the problem, one is the personnel into the factory, at present we are reporting the plan to resume work and production, to solve the problem of personnel entering the factory, the second is that the device is now running to the end of the production cycle, the operation is becoming more and more difficult." ”

In order to cope with logistics problems, Zhang Yuyan, general manager of Huafang East China, also told the Economic Observer that Sinopec Huadong "made a fuss" in logistics methods, increased the number of waterway distribution ships, and urgently opened up one of the important bulk chemical raw materials - PTA waterway shipping process to ensure the supply of raw materials. At the same time, they also carried out multimodal transport, for Yuyao, Cixi, Ruian, Yongkang, Hangzhou and other consumer concentration cities to open multimodal transport routes, first through the waterway to the port, and then the use of the carrier's local vehicles transported to the customer factory, synthetic resin products will have more than 3,000 tons of orders can be sent to the customer through this way. At the same time, in order to ensure the safe operation of enterprises, Huapin Huadong further increased the intensity of enterprise warehouse reduction, looking for available storage capacity for transfer, and urgently chartered 10,000 square meters of storage capacity in March to start the ton rent warehousing business of Shanghai Zhongshi Warehouse. Making full use of its own library and transit library, the synthetic resin department has accumulated more than 10,000 tons of each product line.

In addition to logistics problems, in the process of promoting the resumption of work and production, there are also product factory risks, the Economic Observer reporter learned from Shanghai Petrochemical that under the coordination of Sinopec headquarters, Shanghai Petrochemical through the coordination of Sinopec professional sales companies, to the greatest extent to open the product market. At the same time, with the support of government departments, the maximum possible access to road and sea conditions.

For example, in mid-March, vinyl acetate products were blocked from leaving the factory, and the storage capacity pressure increased sharply. On March 13, Shanghai Petrochemical co-ordinated the Jiangsu Branch of Chemical Sales and the local logistics unit to discuss the product transfer plan. After multi-party coordination, Jiangsu Jingjiang Deqiao Warehouse agreed to receive products, free up a week's warehouse capacity, and mobilize downstream users to pick up more goods early. In March, Shanghai Petrochemical's vinyl acetate products exceeded 9,000 tons.

At the beginning of April, the extra 150 tons of liquefied gas produced by Takahashi Petrochemical every day could not leave the factory, and there was a risk of expansion. After receiving the request for help, Shanghai Petrochemical consulted with the refining and marketing company and Gaoqiao Petrochemical and decided that the liquefied gas of Gaoqiao Petrochemical was transported by the customer of Shanghai Petrochemical by road, and the liquefied gas of Shanghai Petrochemical was arranged for shipping, opening up the liquefied gas shipping channel that had not been used for two years.

In addition to the risk of product leaving the factory, in the process of resuming work and production, there is also the risk of raw materials entering the factory. Shanghai Petrochemical related people told the Economic Observer that in early April, the catalyst of the No. 5 refining catalytic cracking unit of the Ministry of Refining was lower than the safety stock. At this time, the 140 tons of catalysts from the Changling branch of the catalyst company were coming by waterway, but the Shanghai port terminal was closed. After emergency coordination, the freighter immediately rushed to the Port Terminal in Taicang, Jiangsu Province, but the terminal also closed all passages. The situation was urgent, and the team of the material procurement center immediately sought a solution with the Sinopec Materials And Packaging Department and the catalyst company, and finally decided to send it directly to Shanghai Petrochemical by road transportation from the Changling branch. Subsequently, eight trucks each carrying 20 tons of catalyst arrived.

On the evening of April 27, Cao Wenlei, deputy chief engineer of Sinopec Gaoqiao Petrochemical Company, also revealed to the Economic Observer that at present, since the implementation of sealing and control management on March 10, a total of 2164 technical backbones and operators have implemented the operation mode of 24-hour on-duty and production device operators in three shifts.

Located in the epidemic area of Pudong, Gaoqiao Petrochemical is facing a severe situation, taking the lead in implementing closed management in the system, timely adapting to Shanghai's continuous upgrading of control measures, and fully implementing daily vehicle passes to ensure the smooth flow of roads after land transport products leave the factory.

The Economic Observer reporter learned that it has promulgated a plan for the prevention and control of the epidemic that resumed work and production, including requirements for employees to return to work, isolation and observation, logistics management, and material reserves.

In the next step, Cao Wenlei said: "While we are doing a good job in stable production, we will also play a pillar role in the entire downstream industrial chain, such as optimizing and adjusting rubber and plastic products in the automotive industry, so as to meet the smooth resumption of work and production in the upstream and downstream of the entire industrial chain, ensure its continuity, and also ensure the safety of the industrial chain." ”