Kickstart: A stress test for Stellantis supply chain

The automotive supply chain hasn't broken yet, but it may be cracking.

While there have always been disagreements and frustration between suppliers and automakers due to contract requirements, delayed payments, forced price cuts and a failure to pay for higher material costs, it's rare that you have suppliers refusing to deliver parts and disagreements leading to lawsuits.

Yet that's the case right now at Stellantis NV — the owner of the Chrysler, Jeep and Ram brands — and two key suppliers, our sister paper Crain's Detroit Business reports.

Stellantis has sued Kamax, a Germany-based fastener supplier, and piston and gear supplier MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions LLC. Kamax has stopped shipping parts and Stellantis has said it is "one of many suppliers" threatening to stop shipping if not granted a price increase.

In the MacLean-Fogg case, the supplier stopped shipping parts in March after failing to get a 26 percent price increase. Stellantis is seeking a court order to keep parts flowing.

There are, as you'd expect, a lot more complications to those two cases.

But these two incidents are far from the only big conflicts between one of the top global automakers and its supply base. While disagreements happen often in the auto industry, the current status stands out. Dan Sharkey, an attorney who has represented suppliers in the past, said his firm has had to add a lawyer just to handle the increased disputes.

"They're not negotiating and they're really being brutal," Sharkey told CDB, noting he wasn't speaking regarding any specific case. "They've taken this really hard-line policy."

With talks for a global plastics treaty starting up again a week from today in Ottawa, Ontario, negotiators face a dilemma: Should they push for strong language governing the growth of the plastics industry, or accept a compromise that may not accomplish as much in the long run but could win approval from individual countries?

Plastics News' Steve Toloken writes that while a consensus agreement may sound like an acceptable alternative, participants in past treaties related to the environment have been unhappy with the outcome.

"Consensus is a direct route to inertia, to bogged-down processes, to endless negotiations that lead to a very limited outcome," Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law, said on an April 11 webinar to discuss the upcoming talks.

Most marathons will hand out finishers' medals and water bottles at the end. The iconic Boston Marathon combined both on April 15 as finishers received a medal made using recycled plastic bottles.

Ashworth Awards of North Attleboro, Mass., began producing finisher medals made using recycled steel for the award and post-consumer PET for the ribbon in 2023. The Boston Marathon is the first of the major global marathons to use the all-recycled medals, Outside Online writes.

In addition, sportswear company Adidas donated two benches placed at the start line of this year's competition using recycled PET collected during the 2023 race. Each bench contains the equivalent of 950 bottles.