An important message for all of our customers, suppliers, partners and competitors:

A warm hello to everyone in the trade…

We have all seen the news in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world… It will get worse before it gets better so I wanted to let you all know what we are doing as a company and important supplier to the whole bearing trade, what plans we have and how we are handling our part of the important supply route.

We are not planning any unnecessary travel. Our business development manager will be stationed at one of our branches until we see the outbreak subside. We are, like many other companies not accepting visits from other companies to further minimise the risk of infection.

Our staff are all aware that there will be an impact on the supply route at some stage and are all up for the fight, in whatever guise that fight takes. We have internal rules in place to focus on the social distancing and I’m pleased to say every one of us has taken these on board in the correct manner.

Our collection counter and goods in areas are still open. We have limited the amount of staff that will handle deliveries and collections from external staff, again to try and limit any infection.

We are still dispatching everything that is ordered on a daily basis to all points around the world and as of now, we have not heard of any plans for our couriers to postpone collections or deliveries. There may be a time over the coming weeks when we will need to have split shifts, again to minimise the risk. This could mean that morning collections are pushed back to the afternoon and goods in deliveries only signed for in the mornings. This could have a delay in getting some orders out but as we rarely rely on incoming goods for outgoing orders this will be very minimal.

We have plans to put a number of staff in remote offices and also working from home. We have 3 sites on our Dudley complex that are ready to take extra sales staff to ensure enquiries and quotations are answered in the timely and professional manner you are all accustomed to. From a customer point of view, nothing will change. The phone numbers and email contact details you have will be exactly the same. All of our sales staff will have access to the same systems as they currently do now.

We also understand that due to this horrid episode that is in some way affecting us all, that many of you will also be at home and may not be able to receive deliveries so please let me reiterate that our trade-only policy gives you 100% confidence in us sending goods directly to your customers for you. This means you will not need to be at work to receive and then deliver the goods. If you need more info on this then please ask one of our team today. We’d also like to remind our customers that our 24-hour call-out service will still be in operation during this tough period.

We need to keep trading. The economy is, or soon will be, on its knees and the country needs businesses to carry on as normal as much as they can to protect jobs and people’s livelihoods. Our focus is on trying to maintain a steady supply route so that the factories that are now seeing an overwhelming increase in capacity can still obtain vital parts.

As a final note, we hope that you, your friends and your families stay safe and that somehow we all pull together and beat this.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Hamlett,

Managing Director.