Please note that as of 12th June, our new order cut-off time for next day delivery is 3.30pm. For more information, click here.

Brexit Fast Approaching | Guest Blog by Oliver Burgess

While we are all still dealing with the fall-out from the Covid-19 pandemic and doing our best to cope with unprecedented levels of demand, we can’t lose sight of the fact that Brexit is now just a few weeks away.

With or without a deal, the UK will be officially leaving the EU on 1 January 2021, so I can reassure you that Mila is already taking action to mitigate, as much as we can, the impact this might have on our customers.

In normal times, we would already have built up a buffer of stock from both our Far East and European suppliers to ensure that there would be no disruption to supply as a result of any hold ups at UK ports. We might even have advised customers to hold some additional stock for themselves to ensure business continuity.

However, these are obviously not normal times and, with demand outstripping supply right across the industry, stock levels in the Mila warehouse are at historically low levels – as they are for all the other major hardware suppliers.

Nonetheless, we are currently investing more than we have ever done previously in bringing in additional stock from the Far East which we hope will see us through both Brexit and the Chinese New Year in February. Alongside that, we are also working with those European based suppliers who have a presence in the UK to ensure that they build some buffer stocks here in advance of the 1 January deadline.

We are continuing to airfreight in stock to meet business critical demand from customers during November and December, and we are ringfencing the product we do have available to ensure that it goes to loyal Mila customers.

I would ask that you bear with us as much as you can during this extraordinary period. Our entire logistics and supply chain team are working tirelessly to try to bring in more stock and restore our line OTIF score to somewhere around the usual 98%, and our manufacturing and supply partners are giving us unparalleled levels of support. We have all the resources and expertise we need in place. Please be assured that we are doing all we can to support you.

 

Oliver

Operations and Program Director, Mila

Back to Blog