When Is Conid Starting Up Again?

[Karmachanic]

1 hour ago, SleeperService said:

Didn’t realise they supply Pfizer for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Amazing!

 

For clarity. Komec manufactures machinery/parts

[Karmachanic]

2 hours ago, MoriartyR said:

Conid was always a labour of love and a sideline for the company owner, Werner Helsen and a few other employees, which they worked at mainly on the weekends when Komec Helsen’s high-tech machine tool equipment was available for other use.

 

The heart of Conid production problems. Increasingly higher demand for Conid pens, without the ability to increase output.

[AlecG]

On 2/27/2021 at 7:16 PM, Karmachanic said:

 

The heart of Conid production problems. Increasingly higher demand for Conid pens, without the ability to increase output.

I think Komec could output much much more fountain pens if they wanted to. 
the CNC machines they seem to have (from their YouTube videos), should be able to produce hundreds if not thousands of pens a day in parts. (Assembly would be more labour intensive and they don’t have that many employees, about 45 IIRC). 

I don’t think it would be cost effective, these machines cost hundreds of thousands each and (much) more and you would need to sell a lot of fountain pens. So they seem to run the fountain pen parts in periods that the machines would be idling anyway. 
If Komec’s clients are pharmaceutical they would supply to specialist machine and process builders and they might not have any machine time left for the foreseeable future. 

And about Pfizer, they have a production location in Belgium. But readying and botteling is done in Spain and Italy, components and ingredients come from the Netherlands, Germany and the UK etc etc. It’s such a complex and international supply chain that although Pfizer’s name is on the vial, there are hundreds of parties included in the production. 

 

But, not withstanding my whining, they have a business to run and they should do that the way they see fit. And if that business is a part in the production of vaccins? Power to them (and perhaps someday freedom to us).