Omega Plastics, Team Valley – FULLY OPERATIONAL
Omega Plastics remains FULLY OPERATIONAL to continue to support COVID-19 related projects and our medical and other customers. Where possible, colleagues are working remotely from home to reduce the number of people on site at our Team Valley facility. For those who are working on site we have put in place measures to adapt the site 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.
We continue to discuss with our customers how the current position is impacting them and how we can support. As we have explained, we will give priority to tooling and moulding projects related to the prevention, treatment, testing or research into COVID-19. We hope that all customers will understand our reasons for doing so. Following conclusion of the F1 Project BlueSky ventilator, we do not currently anticipate any impact from ongoing COVID-19 projects on the timing/delivery of other non-COVID-19 work.
Our toolroom is running at normal capacity and shift patterns supporting COVID 19 and medical projects along with other customer work. We are also working with several customers to rapidly develop 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 supply chains.
Our moulding and assembly teams are currently running 2 shifts, 5 days a week to meet current levels of customer demand from medical and other non-automotive customers. We continue to work with all our customers to understand their need for moulded components and assembly in the short term and when demand dictates and Omega’s automotive customers restart production, we will look to safely re-introduce a 3rd shift to return our moulding to our normal 24/5 service.
Signal Plastics, Washington – SUSPENSION TO CONTINUE UNTIL AT LEAST TUESDAY 26 MAY 2020
We have taken the decision to extend the temporary suspension of operations at Signal Plastics until at least Tuesday 26 May 2020, to coincide with most of Signal’s automotive or other customer’s shutdowns.
This remains a temporary closure and is no reflection on the fantastic team or the business. We will continue to review the situation and talk to our customers and will look to resume operations and welcome our colleagues back as soon as it is reasonable to do so, which based on current information from our customers we anticipate will be either Tuesday 26 May 2020 or w/c Monday 1 June 2020.
When the Signal team return to work, as we have put in place at Omega, there will be additional measures to reinforce social distancing and we will arrange orientation sessions with all colleagues as part of their return. We will bring back a small team prior to any restart to ensure that we can prepare the site and assess any changes to working practices or areas and plan production with customers before the wider Signal team returns.
New Group Finance Director
Mark Thornton, our Interim Group Finance Director, is with us on a fixed term contract until July. As part of his role with us, Mark has helped us to scope and recruit a new permanent Group Finance Director. I am happy to announce following interviews earlier in the year, Gary Owen agreed to join us as Group Finance Director from week 21 (18 May 2020). Gary will work alongside Mark until July as part of a structured, albeit now remote, handover. Gary is currently Head of Finance at Responsive Engineering, a contract manufacturer based in the North East.
Gary moved to the North East nearly 20 years ago for university where he studied a degree in Accountancy and subsequently studied for his CIMA qualification. Over the past 15 years Gary has worked in finance roles across multiple sectors, including healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. His previous 2 roles have been within the manufacturing sector. We are looking forward to Gary joining us as part of the team and thank Mark for his significant contribution in his time working with us.
Contact details
If you have any additional queries, please do not hesitate to contact your OPG representative. Our contact details are on our website, which you can find by clicking here.
Alternatively, you can contact a member of our Executive team directly as follows
Craig Swinhoe (Group Managing Director) – craig.swinhoe@omega-plastics.co.uk
Mark Thornton (Interim Group Finance Director) – mark.thornton@omega-plastics.co.uk
Gary Owen (Group Finance Director) – gary.owen@omega-plastics.co.uk (from 18 May 2020)
Peter Sayer (Group Commercial Director – peter.sayer@omega-plastics.co.uk
Dave Crone (Senior Technical Director) – dave.crone@omega-plastics.co.uk
Julian Jamieson (Group Operations Director) – julian.jamieson@omega-plastics.co.uk
I would again like to thank all colleagues at our group. Their dedication to continue to support our customers over the last two months has been unmatched.
We also send our best wishes to all customers, suppliers and business partners and their families and friends.
Stay safe and well.
Craig Swinhoe
Group Managing Director
