Coronavirus (COVID-19) update – 15 April 2020
Mettis continues to operate within the guidelines and recommendations provided by the UK Government, Public Health England and the World Health Organisation. Paramount is the health, safety, wellbeing and welfare of our people.
Our company does not currently fall within the scope of the Government shutdown programme (details here) because we service aerospace and defence programmes. The Ministry of Defence has asked us to continue delivering our products and has classed our employees as ‘essential workers’ due to the nature of their work.
We are only manufacturing products our customers have ordered and require us to deliver now. As commercial aerospace customers are now reducing the rates of aircraft deliveries due to the reduction in aviation demand, we have now begun to scale down our operations proportionately and are furloughing a number of employees in the areas affected.
We continue to monitor the changing situation daily and are actively engaged with Government departments and agencies, our customers and suppliers.
Government guidance confirms that manufacturing workers can continue travelling to work (details here) and extensive measures to protect all employees who continue working with us remain in place, including:
- The provision of personal protective equipment including masks and gloves for all our people.
- A rigorous cleaning regime carried out by a dedicated, full-time cleaning team.
- The provision of sanitation kits for all teams across our site which include cloths, surface cleaners and anti-bacterial spray.
- Hand sanitiser in high-traffic areas including clocking stations, rest areas and other key locations. To meet the increased demand, we’re now producing extra hand sanitiser in our state-of-the-art laboratory onsite.
- Shielding of those with known medical conditions.
- Requesting people to carry out their roles remotely where possible.
- Large meetings are not taking place and are replaced by virtual conferences.
- Robust communications including a comprehensive guidance pack provided to all operational managers and shared with their teams, SMS updates to all employees who have signed up as well as Coronavirus information posters displayed in all areas across our site on noticeboards, on our internal TV system and in break areas.
- Unless business critical, visitors and contractors are not permitted on our site and, those who are, will be screened prior to entry.
- Delivery drivers are restricted to their cabs.
- Travel is restricted and meetings, unless business critical, cancelled.
We truly appreciate everything our talented people are doing to help us keep delivering during these challenging times.
