Aalberts update on COVID-19

In the first quarter COVID-19 had a limited impact on Aalberts’ operations and performance. Luckily, we faced a small amount of infections amongst the employees of our manufacturing and service locations till now, due to our preventive safety actions, installed already beginning of March.

Despite the challenging market circumstances we have been able to continue the Aalberts operations in Europe and North America. Our manufacturing locations in APAC have returned to normal operations. Only a few manufacturing sites were closed temporarily in Italy and France in line with the directions of authorities. Shipments to our customers in these countries continued on a lower level.

Many manufacturing sites of Aalberts have received special dispensation due to their mission-critical technologies and product lines. In Germany we have increased our capacity of medical oxygen pressure regulators and valves for breathing equipment, used in hospitals, ambulances and home care, to serve our worldwide customers.

Our diversity in niche technologies, leading market positions, worldwide presence, strong local entrepreneurship and fast decision making is really helping us through this difficult market situation. Like many of our customers and partners, we are dependent on the developments with respect to measures taken to control the COVID-19 outbreak around the world.

Due to these developments and uncertain market situation going forward, Aalberts is anticipating tougher conditions the coming months and decided to:

• reduce capital expenditure only to what is necessary to maintain our operations
• align our operations and shipments with our customer forecasts and expectations
• initiate additional cost reductions
• utilise government aid programs to manage this expected short-term disruption
• accelerate structural improvements based on our updated strategy ‘focused acceleration’
• reduce the salary of the Management Board and Executive Team with 20% for three months, effective 1 April 2020

Aalberts will accelerate the action plan as presented in December 2019 to evolve into an even stronger and better Aalberts.

During this COVID-19 outbreak our primary goal is to ensure, as best as we can, that our employees and their families stay safe and healthy. Our secondary goal is to ensure the service to our customers and the continuity of our business together with our suppliers and partners.

We will continue to monitor the situation closely and provide more information when necessary.