Midland Bearings, the West Midlands-based leader in the distribution of high-quality bearings, says it is already starting to see the impact of China’s reopening of its economy. It is prepping space to welcome 23 full containers of stock being shipped from China after delays were suspended in April due to coronavirus.
The influx of new products is currently at sea, having departed China last week. All 23 containers are due to arrive to the UK port of Felixstowe within the next four weeks. Many of the containers are packed with bearings which will join Midland Bearing’s inventory of more than 15 million items of Chinese, Japanese, and Western European-branded products.
Some of the containers also contain materials handling equipment, destined for Midland Bearing’s sister company, Midland Pallet Trucks.
Phil Chesworth, Midland Bearing’s managing director says, “The taps have truly been turned back on in China and after having no deliveries at all in April, we now have 23 inbound containers on the sea, all due to arrive at Felixstowe in the next 22 working days.
“Our shipment mainly contains bearings from four different factories in China but we have also been able to place orders for pallet trucks and other manual handling equipment. We have already started to see the impact of China opening its manufacturing facilities again with four containers already arriving to us last week. We expect that shipments will slowly begin to return to normal levels. While we haven’t had issues with stock running dry due to the large volume of inventory we hold as a matter of course, our new shipments will replenish product lines.”
As a designated essential business, Midland Bearings has remained open and trading as usual during the national lockdown. It has been able to ship orders throughout the crisis, supplying bearings for use in ventilators bound for the NHS and fulfilling requests from overseas.