Aluminium shortage disrupts license plate production in Nebraska

On Tuesday, October 25, state senators of Nebraska, Curt Friesen and Steve Halloran, updated the Hall County Board of Commissioners on the ongoing aluminium crisis. The scarcity of aluminium can be linked to the problems in the supply chains brought on by the pandemic, which is causing difficulties in producing new license plates. 

Nebraska is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States and, as per the reports, was expected to receive new license plates in the coming years. Senator Friesen discussed how they opted to deal with the shortages, which ultimately required that 13 counties not receive all their plates at once. He claims that a staged method would now be used to distribute each letter series, which is the best mitigating strategy they examined.

"There is about 400,000 to 600,000 plates that won't be printed as normal because they are going to be waiting, because the renewal on license plates is different in the larger counties. Probably these 13 counties are the ones that they could actually move back that production instead of printing them all at once," said Senator Friesen.

"The effects of supply chain problems keep manifesting in unforeseen ways. As per the reports, 13 counties, including Saunders County in Nebraska, will receive their new state licence plates in quarterly instalments rather than all at once", said Saunders County Treasurer Amber Scanlon.

According to her, the county will get 4,000 licence plates in November, ranging in number from 6-A1 to 6-A4000, which will be issued between January and March of the following year. Therefore, if a licence plate number outside of that range is up for renewal, the owner must choose from the county's inventory of 4,000 licence plates.

Scanlon claimed to have been at a meeting last week with county officials from southeast Nebraska when Betty Johnson, state DMV administrator, explained how the scarcity of aluminium affected the state's licence plates.