Essex Supplies

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Essex Supplies UK – Supplies Update

25th March 2020

Dear Valued Customers,

Statement of Coronavirus from Essex Supplies UK Cleaning & Hygiene Supplies

Our staff at Essex Supplies  some of many years, however, nobody can remember such a surge in demand to the extent of what we are currently experiencing. We can, therefore, say with some confidence that we are in a completely unprecedented period and ask for your support and understanding at this exceptional time.

The purpose of this short note is to further explain the current situation and outline some of the hard work that is being undertaken by our teams in very challenging circumstances.

Products

We are experiencing extraordinary level of orders, 3/4x our usual levels, even after some of the mitigating actions we have outlined below.

Our teams are working with our manufacturer partners to source and secure future stock. In most instances, we are our manufacturer partners biggest customers, and they are rightly prioritising deliveries to us as well as the NHS. However, we are experiencing some shortages in Coronavirus related stocks (hand gels, sanitisers etc.), due to the demand for which is more than 50x usual levels.

We have made several concrete actions to ensure we maintain supply for these Coronavirus related products:

• In many instances, our manufacturer partners have been instructed by the government to limit sales of Coronavirus related products to the NHS and first-line responders (police, ambulance and the fire service). If you are a customer which fits this profile, we will already be working to provide these products to you.
• As and when further product becomes available we will start releasing this to non-NHS and front-line responders.
• We are having daily calls with our key manufacturer partners to discuss manufacturing capacity, demand and delivery timescales. This is, however, an incredibly fluid process, with the availability of Coronavirus related product stocks changing by the minute.
• We are sourcing alternative Coronavirus related products using our extensive network of approved suppliers. We are sourcing these from within aUK, however, most of these products have longer lead times than usual (6-8 weeks is not uncommon).

We currently have some  manufacturer supply issues on non-coronavirus related products as well as affected products above , however, to maintain product availability to all customers, we may need to reduce quantities in instances of obvious bulk buying, in particular where orders are over double the regular ordering run rates. We hope you understand that this measure is necessary for the continued stability of the supply chain.

Operations

We have implemented several measures of our well tested plans to deal with the surge in orders that we are currently experiencing. We have outlined these below,

In addition to our extensive own fleet, we will be:• Asking all staff to work additional hours over the next two weeks including weekends.
• Ensuring driver routing is to the maximum available hours.
• Asking which customers can take a night or weekend delivery (if this is of interest please talk to your account manager).

Thank you again for your continued business, your understanding and your support through this challenging period. There may be some delays in the current unprecedented period, however, all our staff are working tirelessly and in many cases around the clock to serve all customers as quickly as possible.

Yours Sincerely,

John Gosling / Managing Director

Dan Scopes  / Sales Director