Chinese New Year is regarded by most Chinese people as the biggest holiday throughout the year and in many cases it is the only holiday when they can reunite with their families and spend time at home.
Meanwhile many buyers anticipate it every year as the hardest time for purchasing as it brings big headaches with production and shipment delays as well as quality issues.
Most importers know that Chinese New Year suspends production facilities in the country and changes time frames. So in many cases the Chinese New Year can result in severe delays.
Therefore is always recommended to the buyers to apply proper preparations, otherwise the Chinese New Year may result in heavy losses for their businesses.
The first thing to be aware of is that factories stop mass production and sample development as early as one or two weeks before CNY.
While the Chinese New Year’s Eve takes place on a particular date, all suppliers start to halt operations around 10 days in advance. That’s why the mass production might be stopped much earlier than buyers anticipate: supplier’s subcontractors have also finished their working season.
Even though a factory office tends to be operational a week or two longer, mass production and production lines are no longer available.
Second, while the official holiday normally lasts around 5-7 working days, most workers remain in their home towns for an extra week or two.
That’s the reason why most suppliers are not back to operation until two, sometimes even three weeks after the Chinese New Year’s Eve and it may be hard to reach any representatives, including the sales people.
Eventually, everything gets back to normal.
However, many manufacturers struggle to get back to a normal mode of operations in the weeks after the Chinese New Year. Depending on the number of workers departing in secret, severe disruptions across the supply chain can occur.
Finding and training a new batch of workers provides new challenges of its own. Skilled workers are, to a certain degree, replaced by unskilled ones who are recently hired.
That’s why the risk of quality issues is at its peak right after the end of the Chinese New Year.
This is just one of many reasons why it is never recommended to overlook your quality assurance and inspection procedures.
The other reason for the increase in Post-CNY quality issues is the large number of orders a supplier, and its subcontractors put into queue. This may include a backlog of orders from early December and onward, depending on the production time needed. This is stretching the suppliers’ capabilities to its maximum.
Right after Chinese New Year, V-Trust as always remains at your disposal to help you control the quality which is quite at risk while factories try to catch up with schedules and face labour shortages right after the holidays.
Below we also offer you to review the list of CNY dates for the coming ten years for your reference and timely planning of your shipments:
2017: January 28
2018: February 16
2019: February 5
2020: January 25
2021: February 12
2022: February 1
2023: January 22
2024: February 10
2025: January 29
2026: February 17
2027: February 6
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