Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

51 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 The Covid-19 pandemic affected all industries, including agriculture, with providers and growers running into farm input supply-chain issues. For Chemical Dynamics, these bottlenecks have come from logistical issues that its suppliers have been facing. According to Nathan “We have raw materials coming from Europe, South and East Asia, East Asia, and Latin America. These materials come by rail, road, air, and sea, all of which have been affected by the pandemic. For example, shipping container costs jumped from $3,000 in January 2020 to $6,000 in March 2021 and are now hovering between $15,000 and $20,000. Many of the price increases for some of our materials are not because it costs more to make, but just because it costs more to transport. We’ve also seen lead times increase substantially from eight to ten weeks to two to three times as long. While we’ve been impacted, on the whole, we’ve done an outstanding job, and we’ve certainly minimized the disruption to our operations.” Nathan is correct to say the company has done well to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, especially when considering the extent of the territory it covers. “We cover about a 13-state market across the south,” confirms Ben. “That’s from Florida to Louisiana up to Missouri and then across to Maryland and Delaware.” Within these markets, Chemical Dynamics sells primarily to distributors, which accounts for a majority of business and has direct-to-market sales that account for the remaining minority. Of these customers, a substantial percentage are citrus, strawberry, and vegetable farmers, although the company is also exploring other crop markets to broaden its scope. Although they historically served the citrus, strawberry, and vegetable markets, they are now targeting row crops like soybean, corn, peanuts, and cotton as the company looks to expand into Mississippi, Arkansas, the Carolinas,, and Missouri. Such an ambitious expansion plan will need CHEMI CAL DYNAMI CS additional investments in manufacturing capacity and infrastructure, besides operational investments in ERPs and other digital platform technologies. “Our focus currently is how to integrate all the technologies we have at the manufacturing, R&D, and process levels to generate more efficiency and increase ROI for our customers,” explains Ben. “One area we are looking at is the possibility of combining multiple products into one nutrient solution for crops. Another area we are exploring is using data analytics to determine the best way to deliver nutrients, while understanding the exact ROI. For example, if a grower is paying $10 per acre, we want to have the data to prove that they