Greetings.
We hope this email finds you and all in your “bubble” well.
COVID 19 “Levels”
We are now in our fourth week of COVID 19 Level 4 lockdown and possibly the last week of this Level. On Monday, the PM will announce what Govt has decided to do, and hopefully, COVID 19 control has been gained sufficiently enough for NZ to move to Level 3
Level 3 – what does this mean for you, your business and the trade? – COVID 19 LEVEL 3 details can be viewed at https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-3/
This information is fairly broad and doesn’t clearly define if vehicle retailers can or cannot open for trading business. IMVIA, MIA, MTA are working with officials at present to try and get the Vehicle retail industry and the supporting supply chains and businesses included in those being able to reopen.
On Monday, we anticipate the PM and or officials being able to supply a direction moving forward and more detail of what is allowed under different levels. In the meantime, please check the above links for any updates.
Current situation
Firstly, we would like to express our thanks to those of you still making payments for vehicles and Autohub services. It’s vital for us that this continues as we still have to pay shipping lines, Customs GST, and other expenses incurred for the vehicles you purchased and shipped prior to the lockdown. Given many of you also purchased additional vehicles due to the ESC legislation changes, this created a spike in volume (and costs) just as we went into lockdown, so the effect has been worse than it may have been given the timing.
Autohub NZ staff continue to work from home. We envisage this will mostly continue throughout Level 3 as “businesses that can operate remotely should continue to do so” has been stated. Should we see Compliance centres being able to open, we will look to reinstate Dereg receipt and despatch – more to be considered on this shortly.
Autohub Japan is still in operation, albeit with half the staff working remotely, and some taking leave at this time. Japan has gone into a nationwide state of emergency but no details as to the effect of this has been announced yet, we will keep you up to date as information comes to hand. We understand that some Auction houses are not allowing people to attend and bidding must be done remotely, while others are putting in place “social distancing” requirements. We are in constant contact with Japan and keeping abreast of what is happening there. So far, business of buying and exporting is continuing, but very subdued.
Vehicle Deliveries
Recent comments from the Ministry of Transport suggest that used imported vehicles may soon be able to be delivered to nominated delivery addresses. There are strict COVID 19 management conditions to be met in order to do this and we are now getting prepared for when deliveries can begin. We will advise in more detail as soon as possible. In order for your vehicles to be prioritised, please ensure you have paid your NZ D2D and Customs GST, and paid your Car costs and/or have an Agents release.
NZ Storage costs
We have negotiated special storage rates with our providers, and we will in due course advise what your costs will be once vehicles have been delivered.
We intend to commence delivery without COVID 19 storage fees being paid and we will advise you of the costs as we calculate what is payable based on when the vehicle actually came out of storage. Please note that in total, an estimated 7000 used vehicles went to storage nationally due to COVID 19 Level 4 lockdown, and it will take some time to get these cars all moved.
Once we have issued invoices for storage and movement, we hope you will work with us to cover these costs over the following weeks or months. For clients that haven’t or cannot pay their YEN and/or NZD invoices, please contact us immediately so we can assess what we can do to help, or what course of action needs to be agreed upon.
This is a significantly hard time for us all. Unfortunately, we don’t expect everyone to come out of this unscathed and we definitely can see a slow shift back to normal (whatever that is now) over an extended period of time. Autohub is here to support you in any way it can, and in return, we ask you to support us too. Hopefully, we can all get through this and back to better times as quick as possible.
For any further information, please contact us at customerservices@autohub.co.nz
Thanks, Team Autohub