The Corona virus has had a minor impact on our ink supply with Affordable Ink currently being out of stock of the compatible HP65XL ink cartridges. Currently we can only supply genuine HP65 ink cartridges until our new stock arrives in about 3 weeks time. We are also very low on the new Brother LC3333 cartridges.
Our ink cartridges are produced in China. It is normal for China to shutdown over Chinese New Year and many people travel to their home towns during this time. It takes time for the factories to get back up to full production after the Chinese New Year as up to 50% of the employees choose not to return to work or find new jobs after the holiday. We usually stock up and hold 4 – 6 months of supply of product over this time to allow for this anticipated disruption in ink supply.
This year the disruption to production and ink supply has been much larger. The main centre for the manufacture of ink cartridges is Zhuhai, which is over 1000km from where the virus outbreak occurred. The city itself has very few cases of the virus confirmed. There has been major disruption in getting back to work due to severe travel restrictions and companies being very cautious about restarting work. While our supplier has been back at work for 2 weeks this does not guarantee that the raw materials are available. The chip supplier only started back at work this week.
We have orders placed with our supplier which we expect to be sent around the middle of March. The stock that we are very low on will be flown to New Zealand and should arrive before the end of March. This does include the HP65XL cartridges, which is currently the only cartridge we are out of stock of, but we are also very low on Brother LC3333 cartridges. As long as our supplier can meet there expected delivery dates then we expect to have sufficient ink supply of all other cartridges.