Delays affecting Chinese-made products?

[FLO]

The Chinese government has applied travel restrictions on at least a dozen cities affecting over 36 million people in an attempt to contain the new Coronavirus. Currently many Chinese manufacturing facilities are already closed for the Chinese New Year. The government have officially extended the Chinese New Year holiday so they will remain closed for longer than usual. It is unclear how long. 

I think we can reasonably assume sourcing goods from Chinese manufacturers will become difficult, for a while.  

Currently stock at our warehouse for popular brands such as ZWO and iOptron are good but we don't know how things will progress. Our best guess is future deliveries will be delayed and when they reopen it will take them a while to catch up with demand. 

Similarly Chinese brands with UK distribution centres, like Celestron and Sky-Watcher, already have stock in the UK but when that sells we suspect they too will be in the same situation. 

If you are planning a purchase we suggest you place your order soon.

If you order an item that is out of stock please be assured you will have a place in the queue for when we next receive a delivery. 

Thank-you for your patience during what is a very unusual situation. 

Steve 

[Adam J]

Well with the current number of infection standing at 6000, a 2% death rate (~120), but also a 20% serious illness rate, the scary thing is that if you plot infections vs time you get a tripling every three days up until this point. That allows you to project that if that trend continues by the end of Febuary 2020 you get the following:

1) 6.17 million infections

2) 1.23 million hospitalisations 

3) 123,000 deaths. 

On one hand you would hope that measures to decrease infection rates will start to kick in but if not, once hospitals are saturated (hence the panic to build temporary hospitals) you can expect the death rate to rise as people will not be able to access medical intervention. Hence in reality those figures could also be much worse. The whole thing really is on a knife edge.  

So lets hope that they get this under control, or we will have much to worry about.

Adam

Edited January 29, 2020 by Adam J

[FLO]

It still looks rather messy! 😕

Some supplier/manufacturers remain closed. Some have reopened and have begun dispatching, but not manufacturing. Some have staff working remotely from their homes but of course are unable to manufacture. One company was able to reopen but because many of the roads are closed, their staff are unable to travel to work. 

Thank-you for your patience. 

[Skyline]

This Covid-19 outbreak reminds me of a film called Contagion. 

[Starflyer]

I'm being told that factories will take even longer than usual to return after CNY, factory workers often travel back to their villages for the holiday and this year many are staying, at least in the short term, as they deem it safer.

When the factories do come back on stream ocean freight will become tight and rates will no doubt rise as everyone tries to book container space. I'm being told that air freight rates are predicted to be 3x to 4x usual peak rates.

[FLO]

ZWO have reopened so the wheels are turning again, albeit slower than usual 🙂

The Chinese lockdown has resulted in record numbers of customer back orders at FLO so we want to say a genuine and sincere ‘thank-you’ for your patience and understanding during this unusual situation. 

[Muzz]

As a customer with an effected preorder I just want to say thank you to all at FLO. I am sure this is a very difficult and time consuming situation for you all to deal with. I certainly appreciate everything you do! (Just like many others here)

Things will get back to normal - In the mean time I am enjoying the clouds and gale force winds so it isn't like I would be in a position to use the ASIAIR anyway

[2STAR]

6 hours ago, Muzz said:

As a customer with an effected preorder I just want to say thank you to all at FLO. I am sure this is a very difficult and time consuming situation for you all to deal with. I certainly appreciate everything you do! (Just like many others here)

Things will get back to normal - In the mean time I am enjoying the clouds and gale force winds so it isn't like I would be in a position to use the ASIAIR anyway

As mentioned, the weather here would have curtailed use of my on order ZWO 533 in any case, so in many ways it is not that fustrating in reality.

eric

 

[MikeP]

I ordered very promptly and have been lucky to have received my ASIAir.   You are all correct about  the effect of the weather - I've had one session outside since it arrived.   

I'm writing this at 3:50 am because I have been woken by strong winds and can't get back to sleep.  When will we get some more settled weather patterns?

Mike

[FLO]

The wheels are turning again, albeit slowly 🙂 

We have a HUGE delivery from iOptron scheduled to arrive next week. 

Deliveries from all our Chinese and Taiwanese suppliers have also either arrived or are incoming. 

We are not yet back up to speed but I think, for the majority of items, we will be in 2-4 weeks. 

Thank-you again for your patience and understanding during what was an unusual and unexpected situation. 

Steve