Age Of COVID-19 (Cont’d from Page 1) essential process ingredients including doctor blades. At the same time,U.S. cases had increased to 3,600.Un- certainty about the future had arrived here.The stock market began it’s drop. A number of our customers began asking if we could guarantee blade availability for the foreseeable future while others increased or- der sizes. In this respect, FLXON is fortunate that our supply pipelines require a majority of our orders be placed with our factory in Sweden 6 months in ad- vance of when blade material will be needed by press- rooms across North America. FLXON reacted by asking every customer what doctor blades they expected to purchase over the remainder of the year.A majority increased their fore- cast through year end and asked for earlier shipments. Based on these customer commitments, we doubled existing inbound orders with SWEDEV and added ad- ditional shipments. Fortunately, SWEDEV had recently finished a major expansion giving them the ability to boost production on short notice. Essential Business Because so much of the packaging and labeling used by the food, medical, and pharmaceutical industries is
produced by flexography; producers and their supply chain providers are classified as essential and there- for exempt from the stay-at-home orders.While this is true for FLXON; we are operating in a whole new way as are most printers and every other business across America and around the world. For the past four weeks, FLXON’s sales and technical teams have been grounded while remaining electron- ically connected to provide troubleshooting to press- rooms. Our office staff is working from home (I’m typ- ing this sitting home at our dining room table) while our order fulfillment teams at our Charlotte distribu- tion center practice all virus preventative measures in accord with CDC and WHO guidelines. Everyone has stepped up.We are in this together. A New Normal As of mid-April, we are accustomed to the United States leading the COVID-19 world charts with 680,000 cases, and growing.As of this writing, the United States has surpassed 850,000 cases. At the same time, it ap- pears the curve is flattening,meaning fewer new cases and fewer deaths. Yet for the first time I’m speaking with pressrooms who are reporting COVID-19 cases forcing them to change the way they operate. (Cont’d on Page 13)
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Flexo Market News April 27, 2020 11
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