Mark Robertson

Mark Robertson

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America Just Can’t Get Enough Lysol: why is it so hard to find in stores?

The Lysol plant in New Jersey has been running around the clock, excepting the downtime for shift changes. Every day the factory uses up at least three tanker cars of ethanol that arrive by train, each carrying about 30,000 gallons. The plant can produce 700 to 800 cans of Lysol a minute, all of them quickly bought and used, or hoarded, by Americans desperate to keep their stuff virus-free.

Why the problem finding it on the shelves? Part of the issue is supply and demand. Lysol uses ethanol in its spray cans, but they're not the only ones. And with Lysol and its rivals gobbling up hundreds of thousands of gallons of ethanol, there wasn’t enough to go around, even when thepandemic-jumbled supply chainwas at its best. And like many global manufacturers, Reckitt keeps little spare material on hand; it relies on shipping companies to deliver steady supplies. “It’s a global supply chain, and it’s not integrated,” says Frederick Dutrenit, senior vice president of supply for the company’s health division.

During a typical shift at the New Jersey factory, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., a digital counter on a wall keeps track of how many finished cases the assembly line has produced. On that day this fall, with about an hour left in the shift, the count stood at 6,475 cases of Lysol, or almost 80,000 cans. In the packing area, the machines were still loud enough to require earplugs. Cal Swedberg, Reckitt’s regional manufacturing director, looked up as hundreds of finished canisters wound down rows of conveyor belts stacked 20 to 30 feet high. Employees call it the Wall of Lysol. As the cylinders rolled off the line to be wrapped into cases, and then into 2,000-can pallets, Swedberg said: “That lasts at Costco about 3 minutes.”

Here is a Bloomberg Businessweek podcast explaining the problem:

https://megaphone.link/BLM3366464594

See the photo below: The Lysol plant in New Jersey can make 700 to 800 cans a minute.

Lysol

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