Letter from the CEO
15 March 2020
Dear colleagues,
I thought I would write to you all now in these difficult and chaotic times to keep you informed and to let you know how I see things.
Faced with such an unpredictable event, unprecedented in modern times, we are doing everything possible to protect the health and safety of everyone and, at the same time, safeguard our future in Italy and in all the countries where we operate.
Our “Crisis Committee” in Italy, created specifically to manage the emergency, has already been hard at work for the last few days. It has taken decisions and put into action some extraordinary measures for the protection of all of us; measures which are often in advance of, and more stringent than, the ordinances issued by the competent Government authorities.
We should be proud of what we’ve done so far to protect our health and our work.
I’m especially pleased to point out that “smart working” got off to a great start at our headquarters in Uboldo; we very quickly exceeded our expectations and overcame every limitation.
A special thank-you also goes to everyone who remained at their place of work, with a great sense of sacrifice and responsibility, to guarantee continued production. Special thanks also go to all those people who have recently been sanitizing and making safe all the communal areas to guarantee the highest levels of hygiene and sterility.
For the benefit of our colleagues outside Italy, we are preparing a detailed list of the actions that we have put in place. In this way, we can share our experience and simplify their work in the worst-case scenario that they also have to confront an identical emergency.
In the next few days, we can expect our activities to slow down as a result of increasing difficulties with transportation of goods and the halting of production at some important customers and suppliers. So today is absolutely the right time to get working together to find flexible, creative solutions.
This is the moment to keep up our resistance in the hope, perhaps in vain, that the European Union will finally be able to coordinate measures to fight this battle as a single unit, putting an end to a series of errors and omissions that have unfortunately also allowed the occurrence of shameful episodes of commercial malpractice by some of our competitors who are active in countries not yet affected by this emergency.
We will all have to be prepared to sacrifice something and adapt to events and circumstances that are difficult to predict. But I am sure that once again, despite these difficulties, we will be able to demonstrate the best of ourselves with passion, commitment, courage and determination.
In these dark hours the light of inspiration can be seen emanating from the experience of our Chinese colleagues in Tianmen who, after finding themselves in the eye of the storm in the area of the country hardest hit by Coronavirus, have returned to work in recent days.
I hope to be able to meet you again in person very soon. I would really like to embrace you, but you know that we all have to keep a minimum distance of at least one metre. So, in the meantime, I can at least send my very best personal wishes to you and your families.
Matteo Liberali
