[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 28^th there will likely be zero shipments from Surry, but quickly shipping again the following week, July 5^th.

On March 29^th, 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 (17^th) 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)

Surry, VA Plant: Boats are still on schedule to arrive into ports this evening, and unload in the morning.  All containers have been cleared and trucks will be standing by to pick up as soon as containers are off-loaded.  We have raw material for three weeks of WindsorONE production due to arrive between this evening and Friday evening; and we currently have an additional six weeks of raw material on the water.

The Surry, VA Crew will be coming in tomorrow, and working through the weekend so that we may begin to ship WindsorONE next week, at 100% capacity.

Surry, VA plant raw material pipeline is full and intact!

Willits, CA Plant: Currently manufacturing, will be a few loads short in shipments this week, and back to 100% capacity of WindsorONE shipments next week. 

Willits, CA plant raw material pipeline is full and intact! 

Our ForAction team in Chile is running strong, and we expect no future disruptions in their supply.

We’ll be playing “W1-order-catch-up” over the next few weeks, yet looking forward to a return to normal shortly thereafter.

In Solidarity,

Craig

This week and next will be the damaging two weeks for our customers due to the Chile 8.8 Earthquake.

Other than two roll-over trucks from last week, we will have zero WindsorONE shipments from our Surry, VA plant this week and next; and the Willits, CA plant will have a handful of WindsorONE shipments pending domestic raw material.

With no raw material, plant crews will unfortunately be at minimum; however, we will be aggressively prepping the plants to process raw material arriving the end of week of 4/12, where we’ll work through the weekend for manufacturing and shipments of WindsorONE the week of 4/19.

Additionally, we’ll work overtime the weeks of 4/19 and 4/26 in order to maximize WindsorONE shipments to our W1 Dealers.

While we’re doing everything within our control, we’re aware that our customers are still losing revenue from lack of WindsorONE shipments.

“Great Blog, Craig, the W1 Insights have been excellent.  However, I’m still out of 1×6…”

We understand that, and would appreciate the opportunity to actually DO something in that regard.

Correct, we can’t make up for lost shipments; however, we’re hoping we CAN find a way to make up for it by helping to increase your company’s overall sales (not just W1) throughout 2010.

Give us a few days on exactly that concept; we’re brainstorming some things.

Strong revenue generating idea/s for W1 Dealers coming soon…

In Solidarity,

Craig

The uncertainty of the Bio Bio bridge does have mills in the region confused, but we’re lucky to have already found a workaround.  However, the new shipments won’t depart for 5 or 6 days, which will yield an additional sparse week of WindsorONE production.

Weeks of 3/29, 4/5 and now 4/12 are going to be difficult; we’ll contact you directly on how this will be impact your WindsorONE shipments.

Marcelo (ForAction General Manager) sent us the following message yesterday afternoon:

“…we have all containers on Sitrans ready to send to Puerto Coronel but the government stopped the truck traffic on the bridge Bio Bio for the risk of falling (this is the only way to reach port.) . We hope that this restriction be lifted as soon as possible. We are looking for alternatives to ship all our containers…”

Approximately half of our containers were going to ship through Coronel; pending shipment/vessel alternatives, we’ll report back as soon as possible on consequences to WindsorONE CA/VA shipments.

I did make note Wednesday that I would report back on possible impacts to our cost structure come this Monday; however, efforts now are focused on finding alternative routes to ship all containers. 

At this point though, it is clear that the cost to procure raw material and to manufacture WindsorONE will increase; we’ll need a few more days to better understand by how much, and by what date a price increase will take effect.  Please note: we will only change the price of our products by the actual and realized incremental increases to our cost structure.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me directly should you have any questions; my contact information can be found at the bottom of this post.

In Solidarity,

Craig

In Short:

We’re going to be okay, but will need to work closely with our customers for the month of April to manage our ability to produce and ship WindsorONE against customers’ needs, given a short gap in raw material flow.

In Detail:

We have containers from ForAction starting to ship to our USA WindsorONE plants beginning March 22^nd.  This will be just over three weeks with zero shipments from Chile to the states, and with the 2-3 week container travel time, our ability to manufacture and ship will tighten at the USA plants for a few weeks.

We expect about 50% of normal WindsorONE shipments come the week of 3/29, and zero WindsorONE shipments week of 4/5; however, likely arriving shortly thereafter will be raw material from ForAction, so we should be back at close to normal come the week of 4/12.  I type “close to normal” b/c without a heavy working inventory, or as we call it “running hand to mouth,” efficiencies will run lower as we’re not able to produce at maximum capacity.  In addition, b/c we’ll be short on shipments week of 3/29 and 4/5, we will be playing catch-up for the month of April.

We will be proactively managing each of your accounts and orders, and when we expect delay caused by the above, you’ll hear from us directly.

It is also possible that some customers will see an increase in freight costs; if, for example, we’re unable to meet your requirements from the Surry, VA plant, then at times it might be possible to ship from the Willits, CA plant.  Of course we would only do so at your discretion.

In advance, thank you for your patience and proactively working to manage your inventories with Jan! 

In Solidarity,

Craig