Borneo Exoticsから本日連絡がありました。
世界的なコロナウィルスの影響でEMSが止まっております。再開時期は不明。再開後は猛烈に混雑が予想させますので当面の間は輸入出来ないと思います。
以下
Dear Valued Distributor,
We hope you are all well and stay that way and that the current situation starts to resolve soon. In the meantime, we are operating as normally as possible. Reports from some of our Distributors indicates that demand from growers dropped for a while in the early stages of the pandemic, but seems to be resuming strongly. From our perspective, demand for plants is currently the highest we've ever seen in our 23 year history and we thank all of you for your support. After a period when there were no flights at all out of Sri Lanka, we're now slowly able to resume shipments and are doing so cautiously. After the important section about 'Payment Policy', the next three sections summarize where we currently stand regarding shipments to various areas of the world.
Payment Policy
Partly due to the pandemic, but mostly due to season, we have a record number of orders on our books, nearly off of which are closing about now. Our payment policy is on page 7 of the Ordering Guide and we have been very lenient about pursuing it, especially for long established customers. However, due to circumstances not related to the pandemic, we had a customer recently cancel for personal reasons after building up a huge order over several months. We carried all the risk and his cancellation was a great loss to us. Fortunately, it did not involve auction items, but did include a great many other items we probably could have sold elsewhere. We have no choice from now on but to require some degree of financial commitment from all customers before building up future orders. We shall be introducing a new scheme shortly and will make it as painless as possible. Right now, we are prioritizing shipments based upon readiness of export documentation, which are currently applied for only after payment (see next section). The introduction of a new payment scheme will give us the confidence to apply for permits as you build up your orders and considerably shorten the time required between closing your order and shipment.
CITES Export Permits (this section does not apply to EU shipments)
It has always been our policy not to apply for expensive CITES permits until after each order is closed and payment has been made. In the current situation, the Sri Lanka Department of Wildlife Conservation who issue CITES permits here is closed and their staff are working from home. We are getting wonderful co-operation from them but even so, it is taking a little longer than usual to obtain permits. This is actually fairly normal around this time of year anyway, as it's the peak period for orders to be closing and many permits are in the pipeline.
Please near in mind that if you want your order to be shipped soon, you need to close it and make payment in order that we can proceed with the permit process.
Europe
The consolidated shipment is currently scheduled to arrive with you in the week of 11th May. At the moment, we are holding to that date and shall be finalizing orders and taking payments soon. In a couple of weeks time, it should be evident whether we can manage to keep to that date or whether a small postponement might be necessary. From our end we will be ready, but we shall be examining the situation regarding the clearance processes in London and onward distribution before we make a final decision. Right now, it seems to be still probable.
USA and Other Destinations requiring Airfreight
There are now some cargo flights out of Sri Lanka with limited connections. We are able to ship to the USA via New York using Qatar Airways and are lining up the USA shipments with the aim of getting them all dispatched shortly. Qatar Airways has imposed a minimum "volumetric weight" of 100 Kg per shipment which is an airfreight cost of about $800-$900. One of our standard boxes is about 15Kg volumetric weight (it's the same, no matter what the gross weight is). Since most shipments don't reach the 100 Kg mark, we're consolidating (combining) shipments where possible. So, if your shipment is low volume, we shall be trying to consolidate it with other shipments to reach the 100 Kg figure or close to it, in order to reduce the cost per customer. We're trying to balance this requirement with spreading the risk by not sending too many shipments on any particular export. We currently have a shipment arrived in New York and can confirm that USDA and the broker Western Overseas are both functioning.
For customers in other destinations, we examine the air fright options on a case-by-case basis.
Express Mail (EMS)
The EMS office here is currently closed and we are awaiting news that it's open again and that any backlog is cleared before we recommence shipping by EMS. The situation here regarding the virus seems to be coming under good control now, but the Government here is being careful and does not make predictions as to when normality will be resumed in any particular regard. So it's likely that the opening of the post office will happen with little prior notice. We want to be ready for this and encourage everyone to close their orders soon and make payment so we can apply for CITES export permits and be ready to export at the earliest opportunity.
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