ZC Rubber Statement about COVID-19

February 17th, 2019

To All ZC Rubber Partners

The Lunar Chinese News Year of 2020 is a remarkable moment because of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) first reported from Wuhan, Hubei Province. The World Health Organization also released Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) as a warning of infection. Fortunately, Chinese government performed effective measures to control the disease. After 3 weeks efforts, we are glad to notice that new patients dropped greatly during the past 12 days outside Hubei province, which is isolated to avoid further transmission. It is believed that outside Hubei province, the situation is under control. We expect that everything will be normal after several weeks, especially in no Hubei area in China.

It is our great pleasure to share the situation of ZC Rubber and in China with the following details:

1. Chinese government adopted strong methods asking inhabitants to stay at home to avoid the virus and test the body temperature of all travelers. Such is stall effective so that millions of workers have to delay their schedule when they are back from their hometown. Meanwhile workers also have to be quarantined for one or two weeks to avoid possible infection when they are back. ZC Rubber started to communicate with employees right after the outbreak of the disease and encouraged most employees to be back to Hangzhou earlier. Today most workers from non-Hubei province are almost back to work ensuring a fully efficient production.

2. The government set up strict control regulations on truck and coach drivers who are quarantined for two weeks to stop the potential virus spreading. The by-effect means transportation and logistics are lack of drivers, raw materials and product transportations are delayed, and the transportation cost is increasing. ZC Rubber took all consideration to secure the raw materials supply promising a two-months souring at the moment. However, some companies, if they did not store up enough inventories, probably suffer some shortage or delay on raw material supply.

3. Furthermore, the stopped production and poor domestic transportation in China caused great reduction of export cargoes. Also, some restrictions are applied after the announcement of PHEIC as a reaction to the virus situation. Some shipping lines are forced to cancel or adjust their vessel schedule. Such decision means that in the near future, the shipment will be postponed due to the vessel issue. 

Mr. Shen, the president, together with the top management, started the daily business from January 27. The priority is to prevent the infection and to prepare the production. Our production resumed on February 10 and now run about 70% capacity. Hopefully the production will be fully operational in next week and the shipment will be improved shortly.

We are expecting our partner to be with us to face the challenge. Our suggestion is: 

(1) to increase order quantity now to prepare for a shortage of supply in the coming weeks. 

(2) to make some adjustment of sizes and SKUs based on our inventories to shorten the time of delivery.

(3) We are looking forward that all our partners may arrange your payment on schedule to give us the most important support during such a special situation. 

We will try our best to improve the supply chain to secure a steady supply to all our partners and meet the demand of markets. 

Thank you all very much again for your support and help.

Best wishes

Mack 

International Business

Zhongce Rubber Group Co., LTD.