Press Releases

RS Components to donate £218,000 of products to Hope and Aid Direct to benefit humanitarian relief efforts across the world

First £12,000 of products destined for the Philippines

Philippines, 27 December 2013 :

RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the world’s leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, has teamed up with Hope and Aid Direct, a charity that aids humanitarian relief efforts, in a partnership which will see around £218,000 worth of end-of-line products donated to worthy causes. RS will initially donate £12,000 worth of products to the Philippines for its typhoon relief efforts.

Items such as tools, hard hats and other health and safety equipment will be invaluable in the rebuilding of communities in the Philippines. RS will pick and pack the products and send them to Hope and Aid Direct, which will match the surplus stock to given needs in the disaster area.

Karen Duncan, Global Asset Manager at RS, chose Hope and Aid Direct to work with on this initiative. She said: “As a major distributor of a vast range of components and equipment, we inevitably have end-of-line products which need to be disposed of responsibly and what better way than to donate them to charitable relief efforts all over the world.”

“The first phase of our donations is destined for the Philippines where the natural disaster has caused loss and devastation on an unimaginable scale. Charities such as Hope and Aid Direct make a huge difference through efficient coordination and logistics handling to ensure these products can be used to great effect. There’s a fair amount of resource required at our end to pick and pack this stock but knowing that Hope and Aid Direct will get it to where it’s needed most certainly makes it worthwhile.”

Hope and Aid Direct gets aid to where it is needed and the RS donation will be including in a consignment of three 40ft containers full of humanitarian aid to the Philippines. Generous donations of 60 generators, 112 Shelterboxes, 70 Disaster and Emergency Life Boxes, 21 tonnes of food and much other valuable aid will be shipped out next week and arriving in the Philippines on 17th January. It will be distributed on Cebu island, where 98 per cent of buildings have been damaged, including one being used as an evacuation centre. 

Roddy Phillip at Hope and Aid Direct said: “It is companies such as RS that allow us to carry out the valuable work we do. The generous donations of goods, time and resource bring substantial benefit to the causes we support across the world. The products from RS will make a real difference to the lives of people in communities that have been ripped apart and are in desperate need of aid.”