Just a note that Met-L-X (which is Ansul’s brand of sodium-chloride based Class D agent) has been on backorder since November of 2021. We were told by our Ansul rep that shipments should begin again this month, but we’ve been told “any day now" so many times that we’ll believe it when we see it.  There were a couple months earlier this year when the Amerex/Badger equivalent (Super-D) was also unavailable meaning there was no NaCl-based class D agent available at all, but that has now been resolved.  Lith-X (a class D agent which  is graphite-based) also had a dry spell at the same time which is now resolved.

We did shunt some of our customers over to the Amerex agent, but some have been unable to substitute and are still waiting. These customers fall into two classes: 1) folks who need to refill their Ansul extinguishers, as putting another manufacturer’s agent in those would void the UL rating and 2) folks whose internal controls/procedures (think aerospace and ISO compliance) specify the brand name and making changes to that is an arduous and costly process.  In fact, these two scenarios bit one of the manufacturers of the Class D agents as well - the company that they bought their free-flow agent additive from changed ownership. They were getting the same agent, but the name on the label had changed, which meant that the specification listed in their FM approval changed, which meant they could not market it without getting the agent retested and reapproved by FM, an expensive and lengthy process.

So there’s lessons to be learned here about supply chain dependencies and technical specifications.

Rob Toreki