On June 1, AMMEX ended the practice of glove allocations. We made our entire inventory equally available to all distributor partners on a first-come, first-served basis.
Allocations had grown out of supply shortages created by the coronavirus, which wreaked havoc on the disposable glove market for more than a year.
Unlike latex gloves, nitrile and vinyl gloves are not made from natural rubber. These gloves come from synthetic materials, but the manufacturing process is essentially the same as latex glove production.
Neither nitrile nor vinyl gloves will aggravate sensitivities to latex, and are largely replacing latex gloves in most applications, especially food service and medical use.
Last of three parts
The nation’s schools are just about to reopen, with students heading back to the classroom for the first time in nearly 18 months.
Despite ongoing concerns about the coronavirus and its potentially deadlier variants, public opinion so far seems strongly in favor of in-person instruction.
Second of three parts.
On May 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that people vaccinated against the coronavirus are safe to go without face masks in most cases. That set off a round of debate: Should we abandon all mask mandates? Is the CDC crazy, especially with the Delta variant spreading?
About six weeks later, the World Health Organization urged even fully vaccinated people to continue wearing masks and practicing COVID-19 safety measures such as social distancing. The debate raged on.
The debate over face masks is a long way from resolved.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks. The World Health Organization says even the fully vaccinated should continue to wear them as a precaution against the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Second of two parts.
Last week, we examined the current state of the disposable glove market, relative to the continuing COVID-19 crisis and obstacles manufacturers face in Southeast Asia. This week, we look at a problem that has been with us for months and continues to wreak havoc across numerous industries—the global supply chain.
After years of optimizing their supply chains and building around just-in-time inventory across all industries, companies are struggling to keep their products moving around the world at the same pace. As a result, the world is running low on everything.
Whew. What a scorching weekend.
Folks on the U.S. West Coast, especially in the Pacific Northwest, have been suffering through unprecedented heat. Temperatures are expected to remain somewhere between miserable and dangerous through the week. Triple-digit highs and unusually warm nights have tested everyone’s patience (and the electrical grid as well).
The last 15 months since the coronavirus spread globally have, of course, been a frustrating time for everyone in the disposable glove industry.
For end users, a lot of that frustration stems from the lack of a consistent brand experience. If you can’t buy the gloves you want from a source you trust, you may have to use less-than-honorable sellers. And that means quality can suffer.
Fifteen months into the coronavirus pandemic, disposable glove distributors and their customers keep coming back to the same question: When can we get more nitrile gloves?
The answer for the most part remains the same: We don’t know for certain. What we do know, though, is that we have a healthy inventory of Gloveworks Black Nitrile Industrial Gloves.
Exam-grade nitrile is the glove material of the moment.
Anyone hoping for a steady stream of nitrile gloves this summer had better expect obstacles. Supply chains are still backed up, which increases the number of backorders. Malaysia’s ongoing coronavirus crisis is putting the country in near total lockdown, causing labor shortages and severely limiting production.
If your customers need nitrile gloves right now, AMMEX Professional’s line of exam-grade disposable gloves is a welcome solution.
