Mineral availability

Recently I'm having problems getting the quantities of Zydrine and Megacyte I need (at the right prices) for production. Zydrine in particular is causing me production delays as a lot of the modules I produce for market require it in small quantities, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pay 3000 isk or higher per unit. My buy orders (best in market price) need monitoring every 6 hours as the shortage seems to be making prices rise by ~200 isk in last week. I used to be able to buy Zyd for ~ 2450, now its 2640 ish...

This doesn't appear to be limited to my region according to this post on the EVE Online forums - can anyone fill me in with any more background to this?

To a lesser extent, Mexallon is also taking a lot longer for best in region buy orders to be fufilled... Are less miners around at the moment?

Can I please ask miners to please help me and fill my daily Zyd, Mex and Megacyte buy orders in the Essence region (I'm generally the highest price)? I would also not be adverse for a direct non-market delivery of minerals per week (thus avoiding sales tax/brokerage for both parties)... remember I'm new at industry so where should I place an advert for such a delivery?

At the moment due to the shortages I'm considering setting my characters up with a new base in an area with higher mineral availability to haul the more expensive minerals back to my current production base. I think hauling is going to become a common thing for my industry character as in addition to the above - I'm probably going to move my production base in the next 4 weeks to a new location. Most places I've found so far don't have the mineral availability and competitive pricing of the Essence market - which potentially means higher profit as all minerals need hauling.

My Industry is now generating ~ 1-2 million isk a day profit after all costs- and I know I'm a small fish in a very big pond, but I'm happy with the growth in 2 months from a corp owning nothing to a corp making profit.... Though I am now extremely limited by the amount of buy/sell orders I currently can have, and I can't see this problem going away anytime soon as when I get Retail to level 5, the next skillbook costs around 65 million!!! So my combat char may be having to train trade/retail up a little (despite the tax etc he'll be charged it may be better for him to put sell orders in for the lower cost products, which generally have a higher % margin (though not profit per item) in any case).

Any tips you experienced industrialists could give me?