We had identified some equipment we wanted to source from China. Partly because it’s theoretically much cheaper, but we also wanted some parts that aren’t widely made.
Sadly that plan is on hold, at least temporarily.
The situation in the Middle East and around the Suez Canal has driven insurance and shipping prices up quite sharply. There are also long delays and a fair bit of added uncertainty at the moment.
So for now we are ploughing on with a bit less automation and a bit more manual labour in the plan. That’s ok, I need the exercise 🙂
Sourcing machines at our scale is not easy – we don’t have the funds for top end plant engineering and we can’t justify financing it without sales and orders. But starting from scratch in small batches means we’ll know our processes inside and out.
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