Kindly review the announcement in order to learn more about the challenges that may disrupt in the near future and the steps we have taken, including setting up our special Coronavirus Response Team contact. We will continue to monitor the situation and we will let you know in a timely manner should we foresee any further changes
Update of March 20th, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly evolving, and outbreak investigations are ongoing, forcing government and economic leaders to take a drastic measure in mitigating the impact. GEMA International also takes part in the situation by continuously monitoring the ever-changing circumstances surrounding the coronavirus and with that in mind, we wanted to update you on the challenges we are facing and the actions we have taken in response to the outbreak.
Current update:
For many companies around the world, the most important consideration from the COVID-19 outbreak has been the effect on supply chains. As a result of the factory shutdowns, store closure, and delayed deliveries, many disruptions have been felt across the supply chains. China, US and Europe’s large-scale quarantines, travel restrictions, and social distancing drive drop-off in consumer and business spending, which creates a severe impact.
Our action plan:
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have strong processes, robust systems, and dedicated support teams in place globally. GEMA’s teams have been fully briefed on essential preparatory and safety measures. Supported by placing our infrastructure in the cloud, we have enabled that all our companies, licensees and employees can do their work from anywhere. We also have gained the experience needed for our operational teams to coordinate a highly distributed mobile workforce. GEMA’s operational team is also spread across three continents and diverse locations, so that we are confident to always have enough personal available even though a single site may be affected by the Coronavirus outbreak.
We are already preparing to mitigate the impacts of a larger part of our workforces and also working on plans to prepare for the ever-changing situation. GEMA is highly confident it can keep up the service throughout an outbreak, e.g. our Chinese operations have been functioning even though the office of our Chinese licensee had been closed for 4 weeks straight and even now only a small part of the workforce is back to the office in Beijing.
We have also contacted our licensees, carriers, and distributors to inquire about their respective business continuity plans for Europe and overseas. This is especially important where logistics and manual actions i.e. by the carriers are involved.
We’d like to thank you for your trust in GEMA. Please be assured that all our teams are doing their utmost to provide you with the highest levels of service. However, since this is a developing situation, we will be informing you about new measures/decisions we make and provide you with timely updates about the possible impacts. If you have additional concerns/queries, our Coronavirus Response Team is available at CoronaResponseTeam@thegema.com
Sincerely,
Heiko Friedrich
CEO, GEMA International AG