Firm notes drop off in suppliers to U.S.

Firm notes drop off in suppliers to U.S.    Panjiva, an information service that tracks the number of companies shipping goods to the United States, reported a 10 percent drop in the number of manufacturers exporting to the United States in February, the most recent month for which it has data.
   It said about 118,000 companies sent at least one ocean shipment to the United States in February, down from 131,000 in January 2009.
   While cargo volumes often fall around Chinese New Year, Josh Green, chief executive officer of Panjiva, said the number of suppliers doesn't generally fall — in 2008, the number of suppliers actually increased slightly from 147,000 in January to 148,000 in February. Panjiva counts both full and less-than-containerload shippers.
   The company also said the number of “significant manufacturers” — those that have sent 10 or more shipments to the United States by boat in the last year, and at least one shipment by boat to the U.S. in the last three months — has dropped to about 93,000. Green said another troubling trend was that 29 percent of those “significant manufacturers” have seen volumes to U.S. companies at least halved in the past three months.
   “These are the companies we put on our watch list,” Green said. “Because we are concerned that with that size drop-off they may not survive the downturn.” Nearly 40 percent of U.S. importers have ordered something from at least one those watch list suppliers in the past three months.
   “This highlights how risk ripples back and forth,” Green said. “Demand falls off, suppliers are in trouble, but that in turn creates risk for those who are still doing business with the suppliers, because they run the risk of a supply chain disruption.”
   Green said he did not have data on whether the declines were concentrated in a particular industry or region, but said the decline was so large that it appeared to be fairly widespread. He also noted that “because of the nature of manufacturing, it is a reflection of orders placed a number of months ago.”