Our latest shipment of ink cartridge supplies has finally arrived safely into our warehouse after surviving feast and famine, plagues and floods. It was a tale of many adventures to get it safely to us, so we can send it to you to recharge your printer.
The shipment was sent to the ports in China in mid January. In more normal times BC (before Covid) a shipment would take 3 weeks to arrive here in NZ once it got to the ports in China. This meant we were expecting this shipment to arrive in early February. But this was not to be, instead we received it a month later in early March.
A Shortage of Ships Leads to a Famine
We start our story with Famine affecting the ink cartridge supplies here in NZ. Because Chinese New Year was rapidly approaching we place an order to be shipped before this. Most of China travels to their home towns for this holiday. We are not the only company to do this. This year shipping was disrupted with a sharply reduced number of ships leaving China before Chinese New Year. The sailors were required to Quarantine before travelling home for the holiday with many of the sailings cancelled. This significantly affected the availability of ships in China.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Our shipment of ink cartridge supplies finally made it on to a ship only to be met with the next problem. Too many shipments are arriving into Auckland Port, a Feast that the Port is struggling to digest. There are significant volumes of freight arriving and a shortage of staff to process it. This delayed our shipment by another week as the ship was unable to tie up to unload our precious cargo.
Finally Our Ink Cartridge Supplies Make it To NZ Soil
With the ink cartridge supplies finally on NZ soil you would expect things to get easier, but the timing was not great. The ship arrived the day we went into Level 3 lockdown in Auckland due to the Covid-19 Plague. Even though we are able to travel to Auckland to pick up the shipment with a travel exemption, the warehouse would not allow collections unless we were a trucking company. We could easily overcome this by shipping the ink cartridges overnight on a truck to us here in the Bay of Islands.
Ink Cartridge Supplies Story Not Over Yet
The ink cartridge supplies missed their connection north in Whangarei. We could easily pick up the stock from the depot, or so we thought. This would allow us to get our customers orders to them on the Friday courier for delivery Monday morning.
As we headed for the car ferry to collect the ink cartridge supplies the Tsunami sirens sounded. The ferries, our main form of transport to the “other side” went out to sea to be safe in the event a tsunami was to arrive. We were stranded on top of a hill next to the local dump until the alert was lifted. Fortunately there were no huge waves or Floods, but some strong currents did stir things up a little. In addition to this the depot in Whangarei holding our stock was evacuated. The ink cartridge suppies had to wait.
Ink Cartridge Supplies We Have Back in Stock
We have the Canon PGI680XXL/CLI681XXL cartridges, Brother LC3319XL cartridges, Brother LC73 cartridges, Canon PGI525/CLI526 cartridges and many more all back on the shelves.
We now have a bedtime story to tell our kids, or anyone who will listen to us. These are some of the challenges we face to keep your printers running. I trust the next shipment arrives in a more timely manner.