> Are you implying there were no supply chain difficulties? China wasn't under heavy lockdown for months on end? I think they were more stating that consolidat

> Are you implying there were no supply chain difficulties? China wasn't under heavy lockdown for months on end? I think they were more stating that consolidation, which often results in a reduction in redundancies in the system, made the supply chain issues worse than they otherwise would have been. Consolidation can increase the instances of single points of failure. For a smaller scale example: in 2016 flooding took a biscuit factory out of action for a time, and suddenly you couldn't get bourbon biscuits (and a few other varieties) anywhere. It turns out that all the UK supermarkets (except Sainsbury IIRC) and some big-name brands were supplied by that one factory¹, so they all had a stoppage of supply at the same time, and those being supplied from elsewhere were out of stock too because the remaining smaller supplies could not ramp up production to meet the new demand². The consolidation that brings more efficiency when all is well can make things worse when something goes wrong. ---- [1] This also lead to “I told you so” comments from some of us, to people who were suddenly asking “if the ones I buy come from the same place, exactly the same production line, why have I been paying 25p/pack more for them?”. [2] And even if they could, it would have been a bad business decision because once that big factory was back online the market wouldn't bare the new excess of supply meaning prices would drop, potentially below cost where margins are tight.