Expected to cost global manufacturers 4 % of total sales for 2021 , the global chip shortage has and continues to be a turbulent disruption across industries , from technology companies to automotive .

So what ’ s caused this disruption ? Dated by many to have begun in 2018 with the US-China and Japan-Korea trade wars causing disruption to semiconductor chip makers in these region ; both trade wars caused increased lead times , increased pricing , and constraints on raw materials .

Despite hopes that the shortage would ease , COVID-19 struck in 2020 . Across all industries manufacturers struggled to meet supply and demand in the sudden economic disruption .

Semiconductor production came to a grinding halt for almost half of the year due to government shutdowns and restrictions .

Once operations resumed companies faced increased pressures and supply demands . In particular the automotive industry experienced a rise in demand as customers avoided public transport and developed an increased desire for customisation .

Alongside this , the deterioration of raw materials continued to rise as a result of capacity restraints and the unpredictability of COVID-19 .

Other contributing events included two fires in Japan causing production issues for the semiconductor plants .

� SUNLIGHT Global technology company and producer of industrial and energy storage solutions - Sunlight - to invest € 50mn into building the world ’ s largest battery manufacturing unit in Greece .

� COCA-COLA EUROPACIFIC PARTNERS Coca-Cola Europacific Partners has certified two of its manufacturing sites in Sweden and Spain as carbon neutral ; marking an important milestone on its journey to reduce value chain emissions by 30 % and become net zero by 2030 .

� CHINA Manufacturing levels in China fall in output to 49.2 for the first time since the early days of the pandemic .

Despite a rise in output towards the end of 2020 , it has been reported that the country could be spiralling due to the cost of raw materials , supply bottlenecks and the rise in Delta variant cases .

� UK The UK car manufacturing industry has fallen to its lowest since 1956 . Producing 53,428 motors in July production fell by 37.6 %.

Weak industry performance and the impact of the pandemic has caused SMMT to cut its production forecast for 2021 from 1.05 million to 950,000 .

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