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As reported by the French newspaper L'equipe recently, with food habits changing in China and preference shifting to pork over duck and goose meat, there has been a crunch of feather used to make the shuttles. (File)
Badminton World Federation (BWF) has addressed the ongoing shuttlecock shortage but claimed that it hasn’t reached a “crisis level”. However, the apex badminton body has stressed that manufacturers must resolve supply chain issues and accelerate the roll-out of advanced synthetic options for players worldwide.
The price of the imported feather shuttles have gone up by 150 percent in the past year due to a raw material crunch in China. As reported by the French newspaper L’equipe recently, with food habits changing in China and preference shifting to pork over duck and goose meat, there has been a crunch of feather used to make the shuttles.
“We are aware of the global supply chain challenges and subsequent increases in feathered shuttlecock prices impacting badminton communities around the world,” BWF secretary-general Thomas Lund said in an email interview to PTI. “And while we are naturally concerned by this barrier, in our dialogue with the large-scale manufacturers and their assessment of the situation, we don’t believe this is at a crisis level yet,” he added.
India takes a note
The shortage has already promoted the Indian stakeholders to admit that there is a need of change. While national coach Pullela Gopichand spoke of the dependency on goose feathers needing a long-term solution, coach Vimal Kumar has asked India to look seriously at producing shuttles.
“India should seriously look at setting up shuttle-making factories around Kerala and Bengal. The quality of feathers is key, but with what’s coming in terms of shortages and price rise, I’m not sure why we cannot,” Vimal Kumar told the Indian Express earlier. He also said most national federations camp in Hong Kong and Canton and buy the best ones that Yonex or Li Ning offer.
Synthetic options
BWF has been working on synthetic alternatives but said that the onus lies on the manufacturers to sort out the supply chain issue. “The Badminton World Federation (BWF) is 100 percent committed to investing in and developing synthetic shuttlecocks for future sustainability of the sport and to ensure long-term accessibility for continued generations of players. We have been committed to this project for over the last 10 years,” Lund said.
To address sustainability and supply concerns, BWF has been experimenting with synthetic shuttlecocks for quite some time.
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“Our testing and trialling programmes for production and introduction of competition and social use synthetic shuttlecocks in collaboration with the manufacturers remains in place and is firmly part of our sustainability strategies for the future,” Lund said.
“This is an ongoing process … several manufacturers have already gone to market with their social use synthetic shuttlecocks, and the products have been well received. More work is being done by the BWF and manufacturers on competition-approved shuttlecocks.
“Collectively we continue to use the qualitative and quantitative feedback from previous competition testing windows to guide the process in making the necessary improvements to all future synthetic shuttlecock production.”
As of now, the apex body has assured that they are closely monitoring the situation.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
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