The spread of COVID-19 is continuing to overwhelm societies and shakeup businesses around the world. As these disruptions emerge at unprecedented rates and magnitudes, businesses are having to adapt and respond in an ever-changing global environment to de-risk supply chains, safely maintain operations, continue production, and ensure the availability of their products.
As an essential manufacturer and global supplier of critical pharmaceuticals and industrial products, Halocarbon is aware of the downstream impacts that disruptions to our operations would cause. We play an important role in the health and well-being of clinical patients, as well as in ensuring the safety of individuals working in hazardous operations and manufacturing environments. For this reason, we have been engaging our partners and customers worldwide, and government officials at local and state levels to monitor events related to COVID-19 as they’ve unfolded and have been diligently working to minimize the potential for disruptions.
As we developed our COVID-19 Response Plan, we took the position to “prepare for the worst and anticipate something better.” With this guiding principle, we’ve implemented a series of measures over the past several weeks to ensure our business continuity while navigating the COVID-19 crisis. We remain optimistic that the world will eventually overcome the challenges of this pandemic and are proud of the efforts Halocarbon employees have put forth to help us sustain our operations and deliver our products.
Ensuring a Safe and Clean Environment for Employees while Firewalling Operations
At Halocarbon, the safety and wellbeing of our employees, their families, and our communities are our first priority. For this reason, we took decisive and quick steps to provide a safe and clean work environment and limit the exposure of our workforce to the novel coronavirus. We ramped up janitorial resources and provided more handwashing stations for employees across all corners of our business, from office environments and laboratories, to manufacturing floors and warehouse areas. We also implemented a comprehensive, global travel ban. Similarly, we redrafted our visitor policy to temporarily restrict on-site access for non-essential personnel. We are following the recommendations for OSHA and the CDC on COVID-19.
To further secure our business operations, we enabled all office employees to work remotely, and made the necessary investments in IT tools and resources to allow for their work to seamlessly migrate to their home environments. In order to protect the health and safety of employees whose roles require they work onsite, Halocarbon quickly separated its workers into two fully-functional groups (A and B). The two-team structure with a strong firewall for their separation and robust cleaning and hygiene protocols are critical measures that we felt were required to ensure a safe and clean work environment for our employees while protecting our manufacturing operations.
Establishing a Robust Contingency Plan for the Most Unlikely Scenarios
In keeping with our guiding principle to “prepare for the worst and anticipate something better,” Halocarbon has developed a contingency plan that will allow us to continue operations even during government-mandated lockdowns. We have enlisted the help of a critical set of employees who are willing to “shelter-in-place” at the Halocarbon manufacturing facility to maintain and run critical production assets and ensure the packaging and delivery of those products to our customers. We have taken the necessary steps to allow these employees to live and work onsite and have been working with local and state officials to maintain the flow of raw material deliveries and finished product shipments to and from our manufacturing facility. We are following the Department of Homeland Security’s – CISA “MEMORANDUM ON IDENTIFICATION OF ESSENTIAL CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WORKERS DURING COVID-19 RESPONSE”
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