UK company Volex is a classic player in today's global supply chain. The parts they manufacture, cable assemblies and data screens, find themselves in hospital equipment, consumer electronics, electric vehicles, high speed cables for date centers, vacuum cleaners and the rest.

The products are specialist, precise and most important, must be ready to join thousands of other parts for assembly on the client timetable.

"The way a lot of our customers work, "explains Volex Deputy CFO Jon Boaden, "is they are producing a complex machine, so perhaps it's a medical product, it might be a scanner or a diagnostics machine, and they're putting together thousands of components. They need all of those components to be available at the same place at the same time. If one of those components is not available, it can have a significant impact on our ability to complete that particular production cycle.”

Volex shut down its 4 plants in China for the New year holiday, which is routine, but kept them closed for a further two weeks because of the new virus Covid-19.

The company has plants in Europe, Mexico, Indonesia and Singapore but half of its 6000 staff are employed in the Chinese operation.

Now they're opened again but at a reduced capacity. Some of the staff can't get back to work and all sorts of protection measures have been introduced such as temperature checks, face masks, disinfection programs and lengthy cooperation with local Chinese authorities.

It all works, but at the other end clients can get twitchy. A car dashboard is only a dashboard when all the parts are in place. Without, say, the indicator stalks, it's good for nothing.

China is the engine of the world's economy. Aside from simple products like PVC, China produces about 85% of the world's rare earth elements, ores essential for rechargeable batteries, ceramics, turbines, lighting lasers, catalytic converters and much more.

Add to that list military equipment such as jet engines, missile guidance systems, missile defence systems and satellites and the scale of the issue becomes clearer.

Like it or not,  the world's second largest economy is grinding slower and the knock-on effect in a high speed 'just in time' supply chain are being felt immediately.

What companies like jaguar Land Rover, Adidas, Puma, and tech giant Apple are realising is just how dependent they are on China to keep their supply chains running.