[edit: containers through, we’re good to go, less interuption that we had anticipated]
There have been recent vessel delays at Freeport, which has disrupted WindsorONE fiber supply to our Surry, VA manufacturing plant. We have already contacted our customers, and will continue to keep you up to date… and as always, post to this blog. We expect about a week of possible WindsorONE shipment delays/disruptions; net result, week of June 28th there will likely be zero shipments from Surry, but quickly shipping again the following week, July 5th.
On March 29th, a tornado touched down at the Freeport port in the Bahamas, which is a major vessel/container transfer station. They were able to bring the port back online relatively quickly, however they did sustain damage to some cranes, which has been causing disruptions the last couple of months.
To date, we have been able to work through the delays; however, on Thursday evening (17th) we were informed that two groups of containers will not reach the states on time, as they missed a vessel headed to Norfolk. We have already made arrangements to have these containers routed to Charleston, where we will offload them and truck to Surry, VA. We are also sending fiber across the country via truck from our Willits, CA plant.
Under normal operations, customers would not feel these disruptions as we would have plenty of raw material reserves stateside; we prepare our raw material pipeline for these types of delays. Unfortunately, given current demand, we haven’t yet been able to build entirely back to pre Chile-8.8-quake state-side levels.
We currently do however have plenty of raw material in the pipeline, we just need to “umph” get it through Freeport. The first group of containers is already on the water, and will arrive to Charleston on Sunday.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.
In Solidarity,
Craig (craig@WindsorONE.com)
The Flynn Report 