How the coronavirus affects you, your supplier, shipping your goods and how to plan ahead for this.
The Corona Virus...
Amid Chinese New Year (CNY), the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus also known as the COVID-19 has caused the lockdown of Wuhan along with 20 other cities in an attempt to contain the virus during the busiest travel season for China.
This has now been declared by the World Health Organisation as a global health emergency.
Now, what does this mean for you and your business? If you are reliant on imports from Asia, you need to understand the complications that are arising.
Affect on UK importers
With the UK government tightening precautions with restrictions on non-essential travel and gatherings of more than 10 people, we can expect more restrictions to be put in place. At the moment, UK logistics are still in place and working as normal, delivery drivers are continuing to work as per the government’s advice of still going to work if you can.
If you have goods due to land in the coming weeks, we will be keeping an eye on the UK logistics sector and keeping you up to date with any developments as we receive them. We expect the ports and some transportation will remain in operation throughout to ensure there is not a build up of goods and vessels at the ports, however, it is difficult to predict how this will play out.
How it affects shipping from China
The South China Morning Post has created a descriptive page which demonstrates the spread of the coronavirus with simple diagrams to show the extent of the spread throughout the world. If you’d like more information about the spread of coronavirus, see the above link.
Importing from China at this time may have further delays than expected due to sailings being cancelled by shipping lines (also known as blank sailings) to save money. This could mean the sailings originally planned are no longer stopping in the UK. If this is the case, we will arrange for your goods to be shipped on the next available vessel (usually a week later).Airfreight and courier service prices are exeptionally high at the moment as UK businesses are running low on stock from the lengthened holiday in China. Therefore, if you need your goods urgently, or you’re looking at appealing to supply and demand with toilet roll and hand sanitizer, you will be looking at a premium price to get them to the UK.
There have been no known issues with products entering the UK, the World Health Organisation have advised that the virus cannot survive long on surfaces so your goods from China will be safe. Please see the World Health Organisation’s question and answer page.
The UK is taking measures to ensure anyone entering from China is investigated appropriately. Any vessels coming to the United Kingdom which have called at Chinese ports, must submit a crew list, crew change information and a ‘Maritime Declaration of Health’. These must all be in advance of arrival so they can ensure the crew on-board do not pose a risk to anyone in the UK.
Our local offices in China
Our offices in China are back to work, however they are still operating ‘skeleton services’ where they have a fraction of the staff in the office at once, then alternating shifts daily.
This means there are not large crowds of people in the workplace at once, to attempt to prevent further spread of the virus. Therefore there are limited staff in the office at once so they will be at maximum capacity.
We are being provided with sailings and contacts as well as any other updates, however, they may be coming through a little slower.
How will deliveries be affected
Deliveries are moving in the direction of being paperless to avoid putting you or the driver at risk. Therefore, the driver will not ask for a signature, to avoid person to person contact as well as avoiding people touching their equipment. This may mean they take photographs of you unloading or have you sign you own piece of paper, which they can then take a photo of through the window.
To cover yourself with regards to delivery, we would suggest taking a picture of your goods on the vehicle and if you are signing your own piece of paper and want to sign for the delivery unchecked, please write this on the paper too.
Amazon have issued messages to say they are temporarily prioritizing essential products coming into their fulfillment centres to ensure household staple goods and medical supplies are their top priority. They have said this will be in effect until the 5th April 2020. This means shipment plans for goods not under this category may no longer be valid.
How should you plan?
We would suggest that you get in contact with your supplier to determine whether they have returned to work so you know what timescales you are working with.
You may also need to take into account an extra week to account for shipping lines cancelling vessels, so if you’re working to deadlines make sure you can meet them with an extra week or more delay.
Once you have determined a ready date, you can use our online calculator to estimate when your goods will be delivered to you in the UK, this does not take into account the current climate so add another week onto these estimates.
If you have a question about the current situation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.