Good news: orders are up to date now...

Also, what has also been a great help in achieving this was due to some of our staff whose houses were not severely damaged and who still had water, power and internet opening them up to enable additional staff to move in with the computers for processing orders.

We had another staff member ‘ferrying’ the paperwork across town to our admin offices/warehouse where we carry out the packaging and dispatch.  That facility is still without water, power, internet or phones but we have a generator to operate the shrinkwrap machines.  Communication between staff located there is still on cell phones.

We have more offices in the front of our factory just around the corner from the offices/warehouse.  Those offices generally just house our Quality Assurance team of five people but, as at today we are squeezing a lot more in as our IT team have been able to get temporary internet into this building.

The clean-up of the factory is now complete and we are working on contingency plans as to how we can recommence manufacturing before our inventory runs out…we are confident that we can do that so customers do not have to worry about running out of product.

Our normal phone systems which are links our offices, factory, Thai offices, UK office and various off site offices together is still not operational and won’t be until we get power back to our Settlers Cres offices.  However, we have a temporary patch in place so you can still reach us by phone if you need.

So, all in all good progress is being made.

Once again our heartfelt thanks for all the messages of support.  In addition to the comments here on this blog we have had hundreds of emails which we have printed for all staff to see.  There are over 60 pages of them!
You may have heard on the international news that it has been estimated that around 65,000 people have left Christchurch as a result of the earthquake.  That is sad for them as it is a great place to live and as the city is rebuilt we will end up with one of the safest cities in the world.  There is a great opportunity to make it even better.  Those people who have remained are positive and the general atmosphere is good although we all carry the sadness for those people who have lost loved ones.