Grenoble, October 30th, 2020
Dear trusted customers and partners,
You may have heard that France entered today its second national lockdown. Let me start by reassuring you that Minitubes activity will be maintained in its integrality. We understand our duty as supplier for the medical industry and have organized ourselves to keep the factory running while assuring the security of our staff.
Let me share a few details on the second French Lockdown and how it sometime differs from the first one:
- This lockdown allows economic activity to keep going. The French President has explicitly mentioned that the industries/factories have to keep running.
- This lockdown maintain schools opened. During the first lockdown we suffered from a high absenteeism of our staff with kids. We won’t face this issue this time around.
- People who can work remotely are extremely encouraged to do so. This may impact our efficiencies on some project work, but not on our production capacity.
On top of that we have spent the past few months preparing for the eventuality of a second lock down:
- We have put in place a set of rules and have adapted working station to insure social distancing. We have had no case of contamination within Minitubes premise. As such we believe our people safe and importantly most of our people feel so.
- Our people are better equipped to and better trained at working remotely.
As per the modalities of the lock down, the government has given a tentative 4 weeks duration with a review in two weeks’ time. It aims at reducing the number of daily contamination from more than 40 000 down to less than 5 000.
To conclude, our delivery plans to you are not affected, we continue to operate 24 X 7 and we have started our factory expansion that is also allowed to continue under the current lockdown rules. We understand that communication with our partners is paramount in these special times. We thus remain at your disposal for any queries or concerns.
Stay safe,
Philippe Poncin, President
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Grenoble, April 16th, 2020
Minitubes manufacturing has resumed on April 6, initially on a small scale to validate the safety measures efficacy. Minitubes has implemented deep changes to its factory and work organization so that our employees are and feel safe.
These transformations unfortunately negatively impact our capacity:
- Short term, we call people back incrementally along April, to train them and to sustain security with progressively increasing headcounts.
- Then, distancing measures will limit the employees number to roughly half of the pre-crisis level, despite running 3 shifts.
While actively searching for further capacity increase solutions, we anticipate a significant under-capacity period. We are prioritizing activity according to a set of criteria: medical business first, criticality, resource requirements, personnel and supply chain issues, etc.
Our dearest wish is to satisfy your requirements, but we are facing an exceptional situation and we regret any problem that may impact your activity. Please get in touch with your usual contacts to best deal with your urgent requirements.
Philippe PONCIN
President
Grenoble, March 31st, 2020
We are very deeply aware of our responsibility to continue supplying our customers during this perturbed period. We closed manufacturing until April 6 in order to reorganize for our employees safety, we refined our crisis organization to manage the multiple issues arising from this unprecedented event.
During these 2 weeks, Minitubes has implemented significant changes :work-from-home and at-work social distancing has been organized, we have prepared for progressive manufacturing resumption under new conditions for the confinement period.
Ramp-up will be progressive. We are starting this week on a small scale to test the new measures efficacy. We will ramp-up in incremental steps during the following weeks.
Our capacity will be impacted beyond the ramp-up by several causes: limitations on on-site personnel for social distancing, reduction in shifts hours to avoid overlapping, supply chain issues.
During this capacity constrained period, it is important to collaborate to take care of most pressing issues first. Please communicate with your usual contacts though e-mail as many of them work from home.
Philippe PONCIN
President
Grenoble, March 24th, 2020
Confronted to ever growing supply chain issues and employees anxiety, we unfortunately had to close Minitubes manufacturing operations last Friday for two weeks. This has been a heartbreaking decision as we are well aware of our responsibilities in serving our customers, particularly those in the medical industry providing devices critical to patients health worldwide.
We are developing a structured plan to fight the virus:
Our employees safety is our highest concern. We have started building plans to provide them the highest proven protection, so that they are and feel safe about returning to work for those who cannot operate remotely.
We are identifying which lines can restart first, prioritizing the actions and concentrating on critical medical products first.
As a conservative family business, we have the cash resources to weather a long storm while our government is promising unprecedented financial support.
Philippe PONCIN
President
Grenoble, March 19th, 2020
We are sorry to inform you that Minitubes will be closed starting this Friday March 20th, for an indefinite period.
We are very conscious of our responsibility as a supplier of components for critical lifesaving medical devices and this makes our decision extremely painful.
From the early stages of the Covid crisis, we have activated our Business Continuity Plan and have mobilized our organization to continue supplying while keeping our employees safe. We have seen extraordinary engagement in our teams to build continuity plans in quickly evolving situations.
But the recent aggravation of the pandemic and the French government decisions have accelerated the difficulties.
You may be aware that everyone in France is now strictly confined at home. There are rare exceptions allowing traveling to the work place for critical activities and we have considered that Minitubes was indeed critical.
We have immediately organized “working from home” for the eligible persons. We froze all our projects to limit the headcount to those strictly needed to support manufacturing of medical products only.
Then difficulties started to accumulate on several fronts: suppliers closing, difficulties with shipping and growing personnel absenteeism.
We heard the growing stress on our personnel as almost all activity has closed down around us. We have done all we possibly could to provide protection to our people, exceeding strict adherence to the published safety recommendations, but the anxiety is such that rational reasoning has little effect.
Late yesterday, we had a plan to maintain some manufacturing. This did not appear sustainable this morning in the wake of the rising toll of the pandemic with a growing number of younger persons affected.
What we are doing in the next few days is an orderly closure and the preparation of the reopening.
This situation is unprecedented and it takes us together in a storm we had not envisioned. We are deeply sorry not being able to meet our delivery commitments. We have tried with all our energy but did not succeed.
We now focus on preparing for operations resumption for a steep ramp up as soon as conditions will allow.
And finally, we know that you as well face the same nasty virus on your home grounds. We wish that you all safely navigate through these turbulences.
Philippe PONCIN
President
Grenoble, March 17th, 2020
Like many, Minitubes is facing the Coronavirus challenges and its unpredictable developments. In this unprecedented situation, our action is guided by two main principles:
- Protecting our people,
- Insuring the continuity of our activity to deliver the products our clients need.
We have activated our Business Continuity Plan and our organization is mobilized to respond to the unique challenges we confront. Our executive team has structured a crisis organization to deal with daily developments and to prepare for different potential scenarios.
Many of our people currently work from home and remain available to you through e-mail.
Today, Minitubes is open and continues producing.
The situation can change at any time, particularly with government regulation. We will update this page accordingly.
