HIGHLIGHTS:
- EXACT MEDICAL HAS BEEN OPEN SINCE 8 FEBRUARY AT A REDUCED CAPACITY. SLOWLY EMPLOYEES RETURN EACH DAY IMPROVING THE SITUATION.
- AFTER RECEIVING PERMISSION FROM THE GOVERNMENT A WEEK AGO TO COLLECT OUR EMPLOYEES THAT ARE IN REMOTE LOCATIONS, EXACT MEDICAL HAS FINALLY FINISHED THE “RED TAPE” NECESSARY THAT THEY CAN BEGIN TO TRAVEL.
- WITH EMPLOYEES NOW RETURNING EXACT CAN BEGIN TO FORECAST WHEN WE WILL BE AT FULL CAPACITY.
- GENERALLY, FACTORIES ARE BEGINNING TO OPEN BUT ONLY A HAND FULL AND VERY SLOWLY.
On February 9th (the day after Exact Opened) I drove around our Industrial Park. Our area is a 4 Kilometer X 12 Kilometer Industrial Park and has hundreds of factories. On the 9th Exact Medical was the only factory that was open. Today there are 3 other factories that have opened so China’s return to a normal situation is still many weeks away. We are counting ourselves very fortunate that we were able to negotiate our reopening when we did. The down side however is that our employees have returned to work very slowly as many returned to our city before the travel bans but still had to perform the 14-day quarantine before they could return to work. On February 8th we were at 11.3% of full capacity and today we have reached 34.9%. We have additional employees still in a quarantine status and as they are released by February 29th, we will be at 45.5%. So, as you can see our challenges are not yet over.
A week ago, as I previously communicated, we received permission for our employees that were in remote locations and trapped in the travel bans to return to Changzhou. Of course, as with any government, it has now taken a week to go through the procedures and “red tape” needed to actually implement their travel. The Chinese have the ability to track each citizen of the country’s physical location over time through their cell phones. The government completed a review of this to confirm none of our people had visited or traveled through Wuhan or other locations of high concentration of the virus. By this process we have 31 of our people that are disqualified and not permitted to travel or return to us. The balance however now has received the OK to move. We are coordinating with them travel options as bus service in China is suspended and while there is now some train service it is significantly reduced from normal. We have chartered a number of buses to travel from Changzhou and collect our employees in some remote locations and return them to us. Others will drive their own cars or make use of the limited train service available. We expect over the next 5 days that by one way or another all will have arrived and begun their 14-day quarantine requirement.
Now having more defined details available, it is possible to predict when Exact Medical will return to a normal situation. Below I have graphed our percentage of capacity achievement over time and you can see that I anticipate we will be at 96.3% of normal capacity on the 8th of March.
We are fighting the good fight here every day and making progress but we won’t see significant additional improvements until our remote workers finish their quarantine period. This is a painful process but it does help keep our people safe from the spread of this disease so it is a price we must pay.
Of course, we have a large backlog of orders that are late to produce and please rest assured that we will be working extended and overtime schedules and focusing on customer communicated high priorities throughout the recovery process.
I continue to thank all of our customers for their support and understanding through this ongoing difficult process.
David Power
President
Exact Medical Products, Inc.
