Delivering in challenging times – navigating through the COVID-19 pandemic and gearing up for the future | KraftPowercon

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on public health and disrupted the global economy in unprecedented ways. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the maritime industry has struggled with a plethora of challenges spanning from soaring container freight rates and shipyard lockdowns to shortages of materials and components. To gain insight into the challenges our marine team has faced during this past year and a half, and what measures we have taken to overcome them, we talked to our Business Unit Director Tommy Rochhausen and Sales Coordinator Robert Beach.

With an entire industry racing against the clock to become compliant with the D-2 standard of the Ballast Water Management Convention, the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time. As the pandemic swept across nations and continents, many retrofitting procedures had to be put on halt as shipyards across the globe went into lockdown.

“When the pandemic started in the spring of 2020, shipyards around the world went into lockdown, delaying planned BWMS installations. This affected system manufacturers, which in turn affected us as a component supplier. We had to postpone many of our planned rectifier deliveries as few system installations could be carried out,” said Tommy.

When the shipyard lockdowns started, several customers put their rectifier orders on hold – forcing KraftPowercon’s marine team to downsize its production capacity.

“At that point in time, we were forced to downsize our production and implement a government-issued short-time furlough since many of our customers put their orders on hold. But things turned around eventually when the shipyards started opening again. Now the situation is the opposite – we have had to scale up to double shifts to make up for lost time and catch up in production,” said Tommy.

“Our customers have ramped up their production again, so they are very eager to receive shipments from us, but due to material shortages on both raw materials and individual components, we have struggled to keep up with the demand. This has disrupted the flow in our deliveries and forced us to become even more flexible in our production planning,” Robert adds.

Transitioning from the lockdowns to a new situation where orders have started picking up again has tested the marine team’s capacity to scale back up. Especially in a time where certain materials and components are hard to come by. But thanks to good production planning, clever logistical solutions, and close collaboration with customers, crucial orders and deliveries have been able to flow during the entire pandemic.

“Even though we have struggled to get a hold of certain materials and components, our production team has been able to maintain a good flow in our deliveries thanks to a close dialogue with our customers and suppliers. By planning ahead and being flexible, we have managed to re-plan certain high-volume orders and delivered the most crucial components that our customers need,” said Tommy.

“By thoroughly planning our outbound logistics together with our customers, we have managed to allow for additional time in production to receive materials from our suppliers. This way, we have gotten extra days in production to complete crucial orders without any significant delay in delivery time to our customers,” Robert adds.