MGL XMAS and NewYear closure

[rainier]

MGL Avionics South Africa will be closed from the 12th December 2020 to the 6th of January for our annual break.
During this time I will frequent this forum as usual but depending on internet accessibility at my holiday location response may be delayed. Our usual e-mail support remains active but for the same reason can also experience delays.

MGL's staff, my wife Ria who is the real Boss at MGL (she runs MGL and knows everything), and the MGL staff would like to thank our many customers, fiends, supporters and distributors for the amazing support during a difficult 2020. Without you - MGL is nothing, with you - MGL is everything. Thank you !

We got alerted to a possible pandemic early in January and prepared immediately, buying as much component stocks as we could afford. That was a good move as it turned out. Sure enough, in April we got hit by the World's toughest lock down and everything came to an immediate, grinding halt. It lasted 5 weeks before we were allowed to reopen with restrictions as essential business. We expected things to start slow and planned for short weeks - survival of the business was now the fundamental goal while keeping all staff employed.
To our surprise, within days we where slammed - demand for our products doubled (at least), gone was any notion of taking things easy. We produced as fast as we could - that was difficult. Our contract manufactures were very slow having to deal with severe restrictions on how many staff were allowed to return to work - a restriction that lasted several months. Making matters much worse - logistics came to a near halt. With international flights near zero, shipping became a nightmare. Our component stocks, as good as they were as the start, dwindled fast. It was difficult to find components, prices started to rise and lead times went through the roof. This situation is ongoing - at least some measure of air freight is back in place. Lead times for electronic components is a huge worry though - we are getting quoted lead times for some parts up to two years !!! We have bought large stocks and have large orders in place. Prices for components have gone up by anything from 20% to 1000%. LCD display module prices have gone up roughly 100% due to shortage of both COG controller chips and LCD glass.
So in the past months, we have been spending an extraordinary amount of time and effort on sourcing components - for those of you in the electronics industry you know all too well - your product has 1000 parts, you have 999 and can't get hold of the last one - you do not have a product to sell and an unhappy customer that can't wait.
Interesting times indeed. MGL's staff have done an amazing job in difficult circumstances and have well deserved a break and a bonus. I sincerely hope that 2021 will bring some form of normalization.

I would like to wish everybody a happy Christmas and a great entry into a much better new year !

Rainier