Having taken utmost care to ensure the safety and well-being of its employees across all its sites worldwide, Valeo is now in a position to restart business as soon as the pandemic issue is resolved, says the company’s spokesperson
Impact on Business and Recovery Strategy
Valeo has already taken all the necessary steps to resume operations at its plants while ensuring the utmost protection for employees, which is the group’s number one priority. Valeo is clearly ready to reopen its plants. The pace of reopening will obviously depend on how and when production is resumed by automakers, customer needs and market trends. In agreement with labour organisations, Valeo has introduced a reinforced safety protocol that provides for the systematic and rigorous application of strict protective measures at all sites worldwide, whether at plants, research and development centres or head offices.
These exhaustive protective measures include daily body temperature checks, mandatory use of masks, cleaning of workstations at the end of every shift and team separation. This will enable us to achieve our second priority, which is business continuity: paying our suppliers, collecting payment from our customers and paying our employees. Valeo is drawing on the invaluable experience of its teams in China, where all of its 34 plants have resumed production. This protocol has proved its effectiveness. Since the restart of our Chinese plants, we have had no reported cases of infection.
Outlook: Present and Future
With the majority of automakers having ceased nearly all production across the globe, we at Valeo have acted appropriately to ensure our two priorities, which is employee safety and business continuity at the same time. Therefore, we have arranged for the suspension of our production activities across the globe. In each case, these temporary shutdowns are carefully organised and supervised site by site. Valeo Group is implementing all the measures at its disposal to limit the impact of the closures.
This includes employee leave and state-sanctioned partial working arrangements. Globally, we continue to fulfill orders received from all our customers that continue to run their production activities. We are also carrying out residual operations where necessary, as for example, for the aftermarket. In India, currently all Valeo’s eight production sites located in Chennai, Pune, Sanand and Noida are closed. We are strictly following the central and state governments’ guidelines and at the same time working with our customers and our employees to prepare for the restart of our activities.