Local printing company facing supply chain challenges

ASHWAUBENON, Wis. (WBAY) - Supply chain issues and delays have been in the headlines for months now with no real signs of improvement.

As a commercial printing business with many facets, including a wide format division and even apparel, Heyrman & Green Bay Blue in Ashwaubenon is struggling to acquire the amount of paper products it needs to fill orders.

“It’s just getting tighter and tighter, and the mills now are only giving approximately 50-percent of the distributors paper requests, and then when it comes down to the providers like us, we’re on an allocation basis, so if we didn’t order it from them last year we can’t order it this year, and then if we did we’re only able to order up to 50-percent of what the order was,” says Andy Heryman, co-owner of Heyrman & Green Bay Blue.

Pre-pandemic, Heyrman says the company would receive any product within a day or two.

Now, it’s a waiting game, for even the most basic orders, like envelopes.

“We had a customer last week call us in a panic, we need 15,000 and traditionally that’s, yeah it’s be here in a day and we’re sitting now at day 10 uncertain if that will show up and it’s a little scary,” says Heyrman.

And frustrating, considering this area is considered one of the paper capitals of the world.

“It is and I think industry-wide a lot of them have switched over to more packaging as opposed to commercial printing, they’ve reduced capacity so they can increase the price, I believe right, no one ever says that but the capacity keeps getting restricted,” explains Heyrman.

Heyrman says it’s a challenge this 90-year old family business has never faced before, and one that he hopes won’t last for too much longer.

“Hopefully it’s only a once-in-a-lifetime experience and through patience, through working together, collaborative efforts, we can get to the other side,” says Heyrman.

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