It’s not just pasta and other basic groceries that have been hard to get hold of, technology items are being hit by shortages too. The latest Playstation and XBox consoles are out of stock everywhere, along with high end tech items such as the latest NVidia RTX Graphics Card or the AMD Ryzen Processors. UPS are no exception and we’ve seen our normally stable lead times descend into the unknown for the last few months.
Unfortunately the situation is not under control as of yet. What has happened is that the pandemic caused the Chinese Government to stop people travelling from one region to another in order to contain the COVID virus. Unfortunately, this left many factory workers basically locked out of the major cities and hence the factories had no option but to close.
Then Chinese New Year came so the factories remained closed and are only now beginning to reopen as people are now able to travel to work. However, the supply chain is complex and although our factories were able to be open, without the necessary Integrated Circuits or transformers they are unable to produce any units. This has been further exacerbated by a rapid increase in base raw materials such as copper, lead and aluminium. As many buyers predicted the costs would fall after CNY no orders were placed until prices returned to normal. However this hasn’t happened and many companies are now panic buying putting additional strain on the supply chain.
This has obviously affected us, and our production builds which would ordinarily be already in UK stock or enroute to us, are still in the factory awaiting parts. As a result, we may need to offer you alternative products for your applications for units that we are out of stock of.
We’re working closely with our factories to ensure we can get stock to us as soon as practicable, however we are facing a period of abnormally long lead times.