Eric Li’s factory making glass lampshades for companies including Home Depot Inc. is being stretched to its limits with sales doubling their pre-pandemic level.
But like many Chinese manufacturers, he doesn’t plan to expand operations — a reticence that could slow the pace of China’s economic growth this year and prolong a shortage of goods being felt around the world as demand picks up.
Surging prices of raw materials means "margins are compressed,” explains Li, owner of Huizhou Baizhan Glass Co., in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which makes about $30 million in annual revenue. With the global economic recovery still uneven, "the future is very unclear, so there is not much push to expand capacity,” he adds.
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