The Canadian company today released an update on its global operations and said its operations in Shanghai were shut down for three additional weeks after the normal two-week Chinese New Year holiday.
During this period, the rest of the operations were working remotely to continue progress on designs of various customer contracts.
As a result, Xebec said Xebec Shanghai may experience a moderate impact on its first quarter of 2020 revenues and earnings, but does not expect a material impact on full-year 2020.
The company’s operations in Lombardy, Italy have recently been impacted by the mandated lockdown of the country.
Although Xebec does not have full manufacturing capabilities in Italy, projects are mostly outsourced into the supply chain.
Xebec said it is now starting to see delays from suppliers based in Northern Italy because of the transportation shutdown.
There are two ongoing projects in Italy that are under construction, one located in Sicily and the other in Genova. Work on both projects is now halted and will restart after 3rd April at the earliest.
Similar to Xebec Shanghai, Xebec said its operations in Italy may experience moderate impacts on its first and second quarters of 2020 revenues and earnings, but the company does not expect a significant impact on full year numbers.
Xebec said its Canadian operations in Québec currently remain unaffected and are operating close to capacity.
The company’s schedule for North American deliveries remains the same and no impact has so far been experienced due to the coronavirus.
Xebec said it continues to follow the current developments and will provide further communications should the effect on operations change materially.
Kurt Sorschak, President and CEO of Xebec Adsorption, commented, “COVID-19’s spread has left both a human and economic toll in its wake.”
“Xebec’s first priority is to ensure the health and safety of its employees, customers, and partners. We continue to watch the situation closely as we execute our rapid scale up.”
“We have been dealing with the novel coronavirus since its first outbreak in China 12 weeks ago.”
“This has led Xebec to prepare for a similar situation in North America and we are in the fortunate situation to have all necessary protocols in place to continue operating in this challenging environment.”
“Over the last 10 weeks, we have increased our inventory and work in progress levels to withstand certain supply chain disruptions and continue our Blainville operations to the best possible extent.”
“The steps we have taken to protect our stakeholders include travel restrictions, a significant reduction of in-person meetings as we have started to utilise remote working solutions such as telephone and video conferencing and instant messaging applications.”
“We have also provided a number of our employees with laptops to allow working from home.”
“Last week Xebec has implemented a COVID-19 Protocol for all its North American employees and suppliers, which includes actions for a clean and disinfected work environment, travel and self-quarantine guidelines and remote working instructions.”
“I believe we have taken reasonable steps to protect not only our employees, suppliers and customers but also safeguard to the best possible extent our ability to deliver financial results that will protect the expectations of our shareholders.”