A Statement to our Valued Clients on the Coronavirus Outbreak
25 March 2020
Upon declaration by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) epidemic (now pandemic) in late January, Arran Chemical Company (Arran) has been continually monitoring the situation relating to the global outbreak and its potential effect to our operations and employees, clients and ultimately patients.
We are committed to meeting client obligations, whilst continuing to ensure the utmost safety for our employees globally in doing so.
Arran’s situation overview:
Arran’s Command team meets daily with a focus on:
- The current status of the COVID-19 outbreak
- A review of the national and international updates including WHO situation reports, national government and health authority guidance
- A review of all staffing arrangements and associated contingency plans
- A review of the impact on materials and consumable supplies for the business
- A review of the containment, delay, and mitigation of operational plans
Current status:
Arran is at the forefront of the development, manufacturing, testing, and distribution of essential medicines to vulnerable patients across the globe. By providing this support, in each territory where Arran operates and classification has been defined by local authorities, Arran is recognised as an “essential” or “life-sustaining” business.
We are doing our utmost to remain operational and every precaution has been taken to allow our staff to support your supply chain as best as possible. We will continue to conduct our critical business operations as normal as possible and keep our facilities open.
The effectiveness of our Business Continuity Plan processes is continually monitored (and adjusted) to minimise any potential impact this pandemic has to our worldwide operations. To date, Arran has not experienced any operational impact due to the Coronavirus outbreak and our service levels remain unchanged.
All areas of our business have implemented contingency planning for key staff and key supply lines via a desktop exercise and mitigations are being identified.
Supply chain:
All materials, excipients and consumables sourced directly from regions classified as high risk by the WHO have been identified with stock levels assessed against known and anticipated demand. Business Continuity Plans have been requested from key suppliers on their ability to deliver to the Arran site.
We conduct daily reviews to consider the impact to external support lines and react accordingly. Your Arran representative will contact you directly should any project-specific material levels be of concern.
Arran employees:
- Levels of movement throughout our buildings has been actively reduced
- Use of common areas such as staff canteens have been put into rotas with defined numbers of staff only to be seated at any one time maintaining social distancing
- Segregation of team crossover between different operation shifts has been introduced where it is possible to do so
- Additionally, we have implemented reduced attendance at production handover meetings and allow only business-critical staff access to our production facilities
- We have increased levels of employees working from home
- Use of virtual communication tools whenever feasible for internal and external communications
- Suspension of all employee business travel
- Comprehensive employee communications updated daily on Arran’s global intranet to ensure current information is easily accessible. For non-PC users, the notice board is updated daily and when appropriate
Hygiene practices:
All our employees have been issued with guidance on health & hygiene best practice and requested to report any symptoms associated with the virus immediately.
- An increased level of ‘Touch Point’ sanitisation has also been introduced within our facilities plus a clean desk policy has been rolled out across our sites
- A decontamination procedure has been drafted to ensure downtime of any potentially impacted area is minimised
- All non-essential visitors to our sites have been restricted or stopped
The wellbeing of our employees, clients, and visitors is Arran’s number one priority therefore during this time we appreciate your ongoing support and understanding as we work together to manage this challenging situation.
We want to ensure that we continue to offer our clients an uninterrupted and unhindered level of service. We fully appreciate the criticality of maintaining global supply chains.
Should you have any additional concerns regarding your product or protocol, please do not hesitate to contact your Arran representative.
