Hanwei Forge Fire?

[SimonM]

Question for Gene:

What's this I hear about a fire at Hanwei forge and what's the timeline like for them to re-stock?

[sanjuro_ronin]

Question for Gene:

What's this I hear about a fire at Hanwei forge and what's the timeline like for them to re-stock?

Fire in a forge?
That's just crazy !!

[David Jamieson]

I don't think anyone is missing the irony of this.
Did this really happen Simon? Where did you hear it?

[SimonM]

Reliks in London, ON is out of pretty much all lines of Hanwei swords and is claiming that as the reason. I noticed that a lot of items I thought to be Hanwei are also temporarily out of stock on martialartsmart.com

[Dale Dugas]

Their factory was not finished earlier this year.

Maybe remnants of that....

http://www.casiberia.com/resources.aspx?node=702

[Featherstone]

If I remember correctly the fire happened at the beginning of the year, did a lot of damage. Havent heard when they will be back on line properly.

[SimonM]

Well, I hope everybody over at Hanwei is OK and that they can get back to full business soon.

[sanjuro_ronin]

A picture of the blaze, all was under control:

[GeneChing]

If memory serves, there was a fire at their China factory which created even more delays than usual. Hanwei production can be sluggish in general and the fire added to that. The whole point of adding a new factory was to speed up production. Sword making - quality sword making - takes time.

[SimonM]

Is everybody alright over there though? I didn't hear about the fire at the Chinese factory until I started the thread.

[GeneChing]

But then again, it's PRC, and such things sometimes go unreported. They kept it pretty quiet - face-saving issue perhaps.

[SimonM]

But then again, it's PRC, and such things sometimes go unreported. They kept it pretty quiet - face-saving issue perhaps.

I hear that. Well I hope everybody is alright.

[taai gihk yahn]

I don't think anyone is missing the irony of this

irony? at a forge?! never...

[jdhowland]

irony? at a forge?! never...

"It's like goldey and bronzey, onlly it's made of iron." --Baldrick

[GeneChing]

This is an excerpt from a business email that was distributed to all CAS Hanwei wholesale vendors.

07/2012
Dear Customer,
As you are aware, our ability to deliver Hanwei products has been seriously affected by the destruction of the Dalian factory and the subsequent cessation of production, when Hanwei was unable to complete the new factory building before the onset of winter. We are advised that the new building has now been completed and production has been restarted on a limited basis. We have been further advised that due to the cost of reconstruction and very significant recent increases in labor rates in China the ex-factory prices of the Hanwei items in our line have risen dramatically, and have seriously compromised our ability to offer a competitive wholesale program.