Covid-19 Lockdown - Tarsus Distribution Supply Chain Update

As the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) situation continues to evolve, the safety of our customers, our employees, our partners, and the Tarsus supply chain remains our primary concern.

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ETAs

Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s call for South Africa to lockdown and flatten the curve to curtail the spread of the Covid-19 virus, we wanted to inform you that Tarsus will be closing warehouse and delivery operations from 5pm Thursday 26th March and will reopen on 17 April.

We have implemented a work-from-home policy and the vast majority of our employees are working from their home office already. We are confident this will ensure business continuity for sales order processing and our ability to receive purchase orders from you will not be impacted. We think that it is imperative for us to use the lockdown period to generate as many back orders as we possibly can to ensure timeous delivery once lockdown is lifted in three weeks’ time.

ETAs

However our ability to deliver goods from Friday onwards will be a problem due to the lockdown. All purchase orders not delivered before lockdown on Thursday will go on back order with Tarsus and can only be delivered after the 16th of April at the earliest. With regards to the Tarsus inbound supply chain we have received confirmed ETAs that some vendor shipments will arrive in March and April.

However the impending lockdown could impact global travel restrictions forcing airlines across the region to reroute and cancel scheduled flights. Freight capacity constraints will impact the movements of cargo into our region and we are concerned that the freight forwarders will have their own challenges getting this stock delivered to Tarsus under the lockdown restrictions.

In addition we are receiving communication from certain vendors that have manufacturing capabilities in other overseas countries (such as the Philippines) that they will stop manufacturing goods as their own countries implement lockdown rules as well.

This will impact the ETAs for these goods from these specific factories and we will update the ETA communication to you accordingly over the next few weeks. We are highlighting these potential challenges so that we can proactively open the communication between ourselves over the next few weeks.

We will continue to update you on the situation as and when circumstances change. There is no doubt that ETAs will shift and move as dictated by the operational restrictions, but we will do our best to update you on the latest information as and when we can.

Given these unique circumstances, we are adapting operations and will do everything in our power to limit any direct impact to your business. Thank you for your continued support and understanding during this time.