Faced with dramatic increases in the cost of Azo intermediates and related raw materials, Sun Chemical Performance Pigments will raise its global prices on Azo pigments, specialty pigments and their pigment preparations, effective January 1, 2018. “The cost of Azo intermediates and other key raw materials have increased significantly and continue to do so, impacting the pigment industry,” said Chris Weighill, Vice President and Global Classical Pigment Product Manager, Sun Chemical Performance Pigments. “The expectation is that there will be no short-term relief in sight for these rising costs—forcing us to increase our prices. While we regret the necessity to take this action, current market conditions dictate that we must adjust our prices. We will continue to explore other cost reduction opportunities and productivity gains to offset the rising costs of raw materials.”

A shortage of truck drivers is a big part of the country’s supply chain problems. The trucking industry is short 80,000 drivers, an all-time high for the industry, according to the American Trucking Associations. The shortage, which existed pre-pandemic but has grown worse since then, comes at a critical time in the retail supply chain cycle, with U.S. ports backlogged just before the start of the holiday shopping season. Truck drivers move 71% of the US economy's goods,. “Since we last released an estimate of the shortage, there has been tremendous pressure on the driver pool,” said Bob Costello, chief economist, ATA. “Increased demand for freight, pandemic-related challenges from early retirements, closed driving schools and DMVs, and other pressures are really pushing up demand for drives and subsequently the shortage." The outlook for the next few years doesn’t offer much hope. Based on driver demographic trends, including gender and age, as well as expected freight growth the shortage could surpass 160,000 in 2030.

We teamed up with the brilliant minds at LogoLounge to provide our readers with an extensive look into this year’s logo design trends and insights in the latest issue of HOW magazine. LogoLounge’s Bill Gardner and an esteemed panel of judges pored through 40,000 logos collectively to select the cream of the crop in logo design from around the world. This year’s judges were: