Important Update: Powertec’s response to the increasing impact of COVID-19 Virus

The Powertec Team thank all our partners for your patience and support at this difficult time and our thoughts are with you.

Powertec Telecommunications wants to inform our Partners of the increasing impact the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has on the ability to contact our staff or purchase product at this time.

Important Update:

In accordance with Powertec’s Business Continuity Plan, a large portion of our staff are working from home due to safety concerns regarding the potential for transmission of the COVID-19 Virus.

Contacting the team:

The majority of Powertec staff are working from home, and phones have been redirected – for many of our team, it is business as usual.

Web orders are preferable as it means we can fulfil your order with less staff intervention.

We ask our local customers to please, Phone, Order & Collect. Call ahead if you wish to collect a package and we will arrange for a collection time. No one can enter our Southport Head Office at this time.

Our Logistics Team & Warehouse:

Our warehouse staff will endeavour to remain in the office as long as they are able.

Due to current issues, the stock situation is changeable and fluid.  Please see the bottom of this post for an update from one of our freight professionals which provides us with a birds view of the impact.

Currently our supply chain is strong but there are some delays due to the shrinking pool of carriers. As you may have read, restricting movement within numerous countries, including Australia has been implemented due to safety concerns regarding the potential for transmission of the COVID-19 Virus.  The knock on effect is increased transportation costs to get stock to Australia.

Please note your orders and deliveries could be affected in the following ways:

1. Deliveries have been delayed for the incoming stock from overseas causing immediate shortages of some products and possibly long-term shortages of others.
2. Delivery of your outgoing orders via our parcel courier may be delayed depending on the staffing situation at the parcel company.
3. Due to the supply of emergency service clients, the fulfilment of your order may be reduced, delayed or put on back-order depending on the products or circumstances.

Should any of these events occur, we will keep you up to date with your order status.

Next Steps:

We are happy to report that only a small number of products are affected currently, and most items are due for delivery soon.

Do you need to set up a home office? Click here to find out more.

We have sufficient stock to supply Telstra, Optus and Vodafone PRO units for home use, where immediate connectivity is required.

Stock Update:

Last updated: 23/06/2020

Low Stock:

Marketing Support:

We have prepared a number of articles relating to working from home and connectivity. Please feel free to share these articles with your customer database to help support your own sales. Read the articles here.

Orders:

Throughout this time, we will do our best to continue our service provision to the best of our ability.

Please keep up to date with the changing situation via our Facebook Page.

Updating Our Partners

We believe it is our responsibility to protect our cost position, both to be able to weather the storms but importantly to ensure that you have a Partner who is looking towards the future and being part of the solution contributing to lifting Australia and New Zealand (and the world) out of this current crisis. The precipitous $AU to US drop along with increasing transportation costs is affecting stock prices currently.

As your Partner in this, we will strive to be as open and proactive as possible in our communications and solutions, throughout the crisis, so we can manage necessary adjustments with your needs at the heart of our decisions.

Kind regards

Samantha Clifton

General Manager

If you have any queries, please contact our Powertec team on (07) 5577 0500 or email sales@powertec.com.au

Update from one of our freight professionals 07/04/20

Current Situation, Update: Coronavirus containment measures and the impact on your cargo

COVID19 has impacted all our major trading partners now, most of which are in various forms of lockdown. The impact on the global supply chain have varied greatly between both modes of international transport but the one thing that remains constant across both in every marketplace is the ability of your supplier to fulfil orders. Domestic road transport links between suppliers and respective ports remain operational for now.

Seafreight:

The global shortage of empty containers is being addressed by dedicated sailings that are repositioning equipment globally, it will take time, but it is being addressed. We continue to see minor disruptions and delays in delivering empty containers to suppliers for loading.

Congestion at ports of origin have begun due to either lockdown of the consignee country/city or due to orders being abandoned, due to this, shipping volumes have begun to decrease and that means shipping companies will begin to Blank/Cancel sailings and omit voyages on future sailing schedules. Rumours abound that economic uncertainty has led to cancellation of orders and that also is bad news for the reliability of scheduled sailings.

In general seafreight shipments are still moving from all corners of the globe with minor delays, for now, due to cancelled sailings. These delays may increase, but vessels will continue sailing provided governments do not restrict their movement.

Airfreight:

Until passenger aircraft are in the air again importers/exporters will struggle to secure airfreight movements. One million passenger flights have now been cancelled to 30th June, this confirms that until then we will be fighting for space to secure that urgent movement. Freighter aircraft are at full capacity with Charter aircraft moving what they can whilst International courier companies have all imposed limits on what cargo moves and giving priority to PPE and Medical supplies, making it even more difficult to move cargo quickly. Air cargo rates have experienced double digit growth on a weekly basis with rates tripling since December. This week, for the first time since February, we have not seen rates increase, so this may just support the proposition that things have begun to slow somewhat, although current rates remain extremely high supporting a massive imbalance between demand and supply.