How Tariffs Could Empty Grocery Shelves
May 28, 2025 | 2 min to read
Sanitube, a manufacturer of sanitary steel products, plays a crucial role in the food supply chain by providing stainless steel tubing, valves, and fittings for food processing and production. President Todd Adams warns that ongoing tariff issues could lead to rising prices and shortages of essential food items. The company's products are vital in industries like dairy, baking, and brewing, ensuring safe production for human and animal consumption.
You’ve probably never heard of Sanitube, but the manufacturer of sanitary steel products is an essential link in the supply chain that gets milk, cheese, and other foods to your kitchen table.
Todd Adams, the company’s president, says that the tariff turbulence rippling through markets and buffeting his operations could end with escalating prices and even shortages of nutritional staples.
Where does your company sit in the supply chain? I had never heard of it, but now I’m thinking I probably eat food all the time that arrives because of your product.
We manufacture and supply stainless steel tubing, valves, and fittings that are used primarily in food processing and production. If you look at an industrial-scale bakery making potato chips, all the guts of that facility would be stainless steel. Or if you’ve ever been to a craft brewery, you’ve seen some of the tanks that they use. We don’t make the tanks, but we make all the accessories—the valves, the tubing, all the conduit that feeds the fluids into these tanks. Dairy facilities are huge for us. We even get involved in some pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements. Basically anything that goes into the body—mostly the human body, but also animal bodies—has to be produced with either a sanitary grade plastic, which is not as durable, or a sanitary grade metal, which is primarily stainless steel.
So if you’re sitting in the gastropub, a lot of the shiny things you see would’ve come from your company?
To read more of the interview with Todd Adams, please visit Yale School of Management.