We are back to FULL OPERATING CAPACITY at both Omega Plastics (Gateshead) and Signal Plastics (Washington). All colleagues across the group have returned to work on normal hours and pay. This was one of our key targets at the start of the pandemic, and it is great for us to have everyone back.
Omega Plastics, Gateshead – FULLY OPERATIONAL
Omega Plastics has remained fully operational throughout the pandemic to support all customers, including those involved in the supply of COVID-19 or other medical projects. Our toolroom continues to run at normal capacity and shift patterns supporting several COVID-19 projects along with other tooling work for our customers in automotive, medical, industrial and technical products, consumer products or other sectors. Our moulding and assembly teams are back to our normal 24/5 service.
Signal Plastics, Washington –FULLY OPERATIONAL
In response to the widespread suspension of UK automotive, operations at Signal Plastics were suspended in early April 2020. Signal Plastics worked with its automotive customers to meet their final demand before their shutdowns and worked with its non-automotive customers to meet their need for products prior to the planned suspension. Signal Plastics resumed operations in June 2020 and was fully operational again by the end of August 2020. Our moulding and assembly teams are all back to our normal 24/5 service.
Supporting our customers
We continue to discuss with our customers how COVID-19 is impacting them and how we can support. We are working with several customers to rapidly develop new tooling to react quickly to different opportunities, or replacement tooling or to transfer tooling where they are seeing an impact to their UK or worldwide supply chains and have an urgent need for product or alternative more local supply chains.
Working Practices
We have put in place measures to adapt both of our sites and to change our working practices to ensure good hygiene, maintain social distancing and manage transmission risk. We are reviewing those measures regularly and consulting with our colleagues on the steps we are taking to make our facilities and working practices as safe as we can. Some colleagues in Commercial, Finance and Tooling Design, are spending some time working remotely from home to reduce the number of people on site at our Team Valley facility.
Visitors
To reduce the number of people on either site, wherever possible, we are using video conferencing, telephone calls or email to communicate with customers, suppliers, or business partners. However, where there is a business need for an in-person visit (tool trial, technical, audit, site tour) we have in place protocols to accommodate those visits. Only a limited number of visitors to each site will be permitted daily. All visits must be arranged in advance and approved by the executive team.
If you have been unable to visit us since our relocations to our new facilities in Gateshead and Washington – we have a short video on our website which provides a tour- https://www.omegaplasticsgroup.co.uk/omega-plastics-group-about-us/
Operational and contingency planning
We started to plan for COVID-19 in January 2020 and during the beginning of the pandemic updated colleagues and customers on plans weekly. Our executive and operations team continue to meet daily to review any changes to guidance, any absences, capacity planning, any risks in the supply chain, reacting to new opportunities or any other planning or preparation we need to do.
Both of our facilities operate 24/5. If either site was to be impacted by a number of colleagues unwell or in isolation, we would have the flexibility to extend our working hours, to transfer colleagues on a temporary basis from one site and/or to bring in new colleagues to support production. This ability to be flexible and balance our management, technical, logistics, quality or production colleagues between our two sites is something that has already worked well in practice during the pandemic.
All our colleagues understand and support the need for us to remain agile in how we work. This gives us the flexibility to react to time critical COVID-19 projects and support all our customers to react to new opportunities or a changing demand for their product.
Looking forward
We will continue to exercise caution as the pandemic evolves. However, we look forward to the future with great optimism with some exciting announcements in relation to investment in people, facilities, and our capability over the next 12 months.
We will only provide further operational updates if our operational status changes. However, please follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/omega-plastics/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/signalplastics) for further general business updates.
Contact details/queries
If you have any additional queries, please do not hesitate to contact your OPG contact. Our contact details can be found here.
I would like to thank all colleagues in the Group for their dedication and continued support over the last six months. I would also like to thank all customers, suppliers and business partners for their continued support and trust.
Stay safe and well.
Craig Swinhoe
Group Managing Director
Issued: Week 41 (Thursday 8 October 2020)
