Chlorine shortage could make for murky waters
Backyard swimming pools could be affected as demand increases but supply dwindles
As summer draws near and Orlando homeowners start taking dips in their backyard pools again, pool stores are growing nervous about a key ingredient: chlorine.
“We’re worried about July and August, when our early buys [of chlorine] run out,” said Tracey Ewald, owner of All American Pool-N-Patio in Orlando. “We’re worried that customers might not come back if they can’t get it here.”
Pool-cleaning supply prices are spiking nationally after a factory fire last year left manufacturers without crucial ingredients for chlorine tablets.
The increased demand will make tablets harder to find in Florida’s residential communities like Coral Springs, where two-thirds of all homes have pools — the nation’s highest percentage, Realtor.com reported in 2015.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Florida had more than 2 million homes with pools in 2015, the most recent data available.
Prices for trichlor tablets, one of the most popular and convenient ways to keep pool water sanitized, have increased dramatically since Hurricane Laura caused a fire last August that destroyed one of the nation’s largest makers of the tablets, BioLab, in the Lake Charles region of Louisiana.
The shortage destroyed a huge amount of dry chemicals used to make trichlor (short for trichloro-s-triazinetrione) tablets, as well as granular chlorine preferred by some pool owners and the quick-boosting granular product known as pool shock.
“It’s probably going to be in short supply this summer,” predicted Pat Allman, general manager of Tampa-based Odyssey Manufacturing, which makes more than 40% of liquid chlorine sold in Florida. “You’re going to go to your local pool store and they’re going to be out for a day or two. It’s not going to be all gloom and doom. You just might not shock or clean or kill all of the algae as much as you want to.”
Prices for bulk containers of the trichlor tablets have doubled for pool service companies since the fire, and some have said suppliers are refusing to sell more than two buckets of tablets to any individual purchaser.
Retail prices for do-it-yourselfers have increased sharply as well.
“We used to be able to get it in tablets and packs, buckets of 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds,” Ewald said. “Now we can only get these 21-pound buckets.”
A 50-pound bucket of In The Swim-brand 3-inch stabilized chlorine tablets that sold for $109 a few years ago is currently listed at $169.99 on Amazon.
Because the Louisiana fire happened late in the 2020 summer season, consumers and pool service providers likely had no problem finding chlorine tablets or granules during the cold season, when fewer chemicals are necessary even in warm weather states like Florida.
That should change now as pool owners in northern states begin buying chemicals to reopen their pools for summer, industry experts warn.
Users of liquid chlorine, such as the Island H20 water park at the Margaritaville Resort in Kissimmee, aren’t yet facing a crunch.
“At this point, we aren’t anticipating any issues from our suppliers,” Margaritaville marketing manager Todd Andrus said.
The impact on other Central Florida water parks was unclear. Disney, Universal and SeaWorld did not return requests for comment.
Unlike makers of the dry chlorine tablets, liquid chlorine is manufactured closer to regions where demand is high because transportation costs are higher for the heavier water-based product. So pool owners who use liquid chlorine don’t need to worry about a single event like a fire dramatically reducing inventory.
Still, Odyssey Manufacturing’s Allman says pool owners should expect supplies to tighten over the summer as the shortage of chlorine tablets forces users to turn to liquid chlorine.
Most liquid chlorine manufacturers, he said, have announced price increases taking effect on June 1, stemming largely from higher costs of diesel fuel. Rising diesel fuel prices have cost the company more than $1 million over the past three months, he said, and it has no choice but to pass that increase along to customers.
Allman expects Odyssey to announce a price increase ranging from 5% to 10% in June. Any supply shortage will likely occur around July and August, he said.
In the meantime, supply stores like Ewald’s in Orlando are left to wait and see.
“Right now, it’s just sell what we have and hope we make it through the summer,” she said.