UPDATE FROM THE IMPORTER>>> (Not that you guys really care, but you get to see what we are dealing with up north... )---------------------------------------------------------------------------
T81 Update Feb 21st 2017 We had a lengthy discussion with Poly today, they have recently visited the factory and we have some new information regarding our order. The factory makes a production plan at the beginning of every year, that lays out their production schedule for the entire year. Unbeknownst to us or Poly at the time, the T81 is not a commonly ordered item and it is only produced every once in a while, not even on a yearly basis. There needs to be a certain number of orders together before the factory will consider doing a production run. Initially, Poly was likely telling us estimates based on their experience with other projects, such as the T97 that is produced on a regular basis, unaware that the T81 was seldom produced by the factory. Poly was told by the factory in the fall there was no scheduled 2016 T81 production, however they had received a government order of 30,000 T81’s, so there would be an upcoming T81 order regardless. They’d try and get the order in the winter if they could, but no guarantees due to the recently expanded military orders they were fulfilling.
We have been informed the production plan for 2017 was developed and the T81 production run was officially scheduled for this July. The factory has a 50 million dollar government contract for AK’s that has to be produced first. They are on maximum capacity with nothing else being produced until this is finished. Once this is done however, we are first on the list. While all of this may seem like bad news, we are lucky for a number of reasons:
1) If the contract for 30k T81’s didn’t come in last year, we could be waiting even longer for the factory to justify a production run
2) The Chinese military will be re-arming their service rifles with a new unannounced modular rifle. We have been told that the factory (among others) will only producing rifles for the re-armament for next 2-3 years, then you can imagine the backlog of orders to fulfill after that. This means that this could be the only T81 production run in the next 3+ years, likely even longer.
We understand that many may be frustrated by this news but this is a situation completely out of our control; we can only go by the information we receive. We strive to make sure everyone that deals with Tactical Imports is a happy client, so in addition to the pre-order bonuses of a spare extra magazine and sling we will now be providing everyone with a T81 order as of February 20th, $50 of store credit for use with a future purchase or issued as a gift certificate to a third party. We of course will be offering full refunds upon request, however keep in mind the store credit bonus is only for active orders placed prior to February 21. Also keep in mind, those with pre-orders have a locked-in price.
Good news is that we have received our 5/30 magazines and wood stock set finished as per production specs, so shortly we’ll be able to send our prototype T81 around for media reviews, articles and videos. Those patiently waiting will be awarded with some long awaited content.