ETEL COVID-19 RESPONSE

UPDATE – 11 June 2020

Kia ora and greetings, we hope that all of you are well.

We are pleased that New Zealand has moved to Alert Level 1, removing all physical distancing requirements. Life in New Zealand is now returning to normal.

In Australia, restrictions are still in place and ETEL is supporting all its employees there to ensure that they can continue to work safely.

Transformer production – returning to maximum production capacity

With physical distancing requirements being lifted, we are now able to work at optimal rate. We are looking forward to returning to our maximum production capacity.

We are here for you

ETEL sales team in New Zealand has returned to the office. Our office site is now open to visitors. We will resume customer visits in coming months. We are continuing the use of Microsoft Teams if customers prefer to meet online.

Sales Australia continue to be available via their mobile phones, email and web meeting facility.

Supply chain continuity

We continue to monitor the situation in other countries and work with our suppliers regularly to ensure the security of our supply chain. We currently do not foresee any disruption to our supply chain.

Health, safety and wellbeing

We are pleased that our employees were well and safe while working onsite during all previous alert levels. Even in Level 1, we are retaining the good hygiene practices that have been in place.

Keeping in touch

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your customer representatives.

 

ETEL COVID-19 Business Continuity Measures under COVID-19 Alert Level 1 in New Zealand

Keeping up with the pandemic updates

ETEL’s pandemic response team used to meet online daily to review the New Zealand and Australians governments positions on COVID-19. With improved situations in both countries, the team now meets once a week to continue our support to ETEL Australia.

Staff in Auckland site

Here are the changes of our work practices onsite:

Site induction – There is now no need for COVID-19 health and safety inductions for employees returning to the worksite.

Daily communications on health and safety – We communicate daily to all employees reminding them to wash hands often and maintain high hygiene practices.  We remind them that any sick employee needs to stay at home.

Physical distancing – There will be no requirements for physical distancing, so our bubble arrangement and distance rules will end. Our staggered start and end times are now back to normal shift hours.

Communal areas – Lunch breaks are now returning to normal time. There is no limit of people using communal areas.

Team meetings – There is now no limit of people attending a meeting in a closed room. Meetings via Microsoft Teams are continuing where it is sensible to do so.

PPE – Masks will not be required on site. However they will be made available for people who prefer to wear one.

Visitors and contractors

Our site is now open to visitors and contractors.  We will use the visitors sign-in for contact tracing if required.

 

UPDATE – 21 May 2020

Kia ora and greetings, we hope that you all are well.

Last Thursday, New Zealand moved to Alert Level 2, allowing more businesses, schools and public facilities to operate again. With life in New Zealand now returning towards normal, we thank our customers, suppliers and service providers for your patience and continuous support throughout the challenging lockdown duration.

ETEL – Operating at full capacity

With all the relevant health and safety measures in place, we now have all factory employees back on the production floor. We are now building up our output, as quick as we can and will soon be at full production levels. This does take a bit of time, as we bring all parts of the production line back up to full speed. We hope that our customers will understand as we endeavour to bring the products to you as soon as possible.

We are here for you

With social distancing rules in place at the office, our office employees are starting to work onsite on a rotational basis. Even when they work from home, ETEL sales team in New Zealand and Australia continue to be available via their mobile phones, email and web meeting facility.

Supply chain continuity

We continue to monitor the situation in other countries and work with our suppliers regularly to ensure the security of our supply chain. We have been fortunate that our suppliers have managed to continue to provide us with good levels of components and materials that now allow us not to have any material constraints as we ramp up our levels of output.

Health, safety and wellbeing

We continue to keep our employees safe while working onsite. I have included our COVID-19 Business Continuity measures under Alert Level 2 for your reference.

Keeping in touch

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your customer representatives.

We wish for you to stay safe, healthy and positive.

 

 

ETEL COVID-19 Business Continuity Measures under COVID-19 Alert Level 2 in New Zealand

Keeping up with the pandemic updates

ETEL’s pandemic response team used to meet online daily to review the New Zealand and Australians governments positions on COVID-19. With improved situations in both countries, the team now meets three times a week.

Staff on site

Here’s how we keep our employees safe onsite:

Site induction – All employees who had been away during the lockdown had undergone health and safety inductions to ensure that they practice the newly implemented safety measures we rolled out.

Daily checks – Every morning our leads are individually checking in with staff to ensure that they are healthy. Only healthy employees are allowed onsite.

Daily communications on health and safety – We communicate daily to all employees reminding them to wash hands more often and maintain high hygiene practices.

Physical distancing – The work bubble arrangement we set up during Alert Level 3 and 4 will continue. We have re-organised the employees into smaller teams to create their own work bubble and minimise interactions. All production plants will continue to operate with employees being at least 2 metres apart. To cater for the increased number of teams, we have introduced new start and finishing times to stagger their work hours.

Communal areas – We have staggered the teams’ work breaks so that the employees are only interacting with their work bubble during breaks.

Team meetings – Team meetings are held in smaller groups of less than ten people. Meetings via Microsoft Teams are still encouraged.

Additional cleaning – Cleaning by our cleaners has been tripled. We also provide sanitising products for employees to self-clean and sanitise their workstations each day. We will continue with this high level of cleaning.

PPE – We have supplied PPE (gloves, masks etc) to our employees. This is made available at each workstation to reduce employees’ movement.

Contact tracing – Even though we have minimised cross bubble interactions, employees who have to work with people outside their bubble will note down the interactions to enable us to perform contact tracing, if required.

Visitors and contractors

To reduce the risk of our employees being exposed to visitors with COVID-19, we have closed our site to external people. Our site is still closed to visitors until further notice.

UPDATE – 23 April 2020

Kia ora and greetings, we hope that you all are well.

ETEL – Essential and Safe Services
New Zealand is still currently under a lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are pleased that the New Zealand government has announced that the country will move to Alert Level 3 starting next Tuesday, 28 April. With the latest guidelines announced by the government on 16 April 2020, Alert Level 3 allows ETEL to resume non-essential work, in addition to making essential supplies. With all the relevant health and safety measures still in place, we are now preparing to increase the number of employees onsite and ramp up production.

We are here for you
The government still requires for people to work from home under Alert Level 3 as much as possible. The ETEL sales team in New Zealand and Australia are working remotely from home and continue to be available via their mobile phones, email and web meeting facility.

Operations
Our operation continues with transformers being manufactured daily and dispatched to our customers in New Zealand, Australia and Pacific Islands.

Supply chain continuity
As we look forward to increasing production, we are mindful of some of our suppliers still operating under extended lockdown in their country. To ensure our security of supply chain, we continue to communicate with our suppliers regularly and work with them to secure the materials and components we need for production.

Health, safety and wellbeing
While continuing to keep our employees safe while working onsite, we have prepared for business continuity beyond the lockdown. I have included our COVID-19 Business Continuity measures under Alert 3 for your reference.

Keeping in touch
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your customer representatives. As we get further updates from the governments of the countries we operate in, we will review and update our practices and keep you posted on any changes.

We wish for you to stay safe, healthy and positive.

ETEL COVID-19 Business Continuity Measures under COVID-19 Alert Level 3 in New Zealand

Keeping up with the pandemic updates
We have created a pandemic response team that meets online daily to review the New Zealand and Australians governments positions on COVID-19. We then update our practices accordingly. This will continue during Alert Level 3.

At risk workers
All our at risk workers will continue to stay at home in order to keep them safe.

Staff on site
Here’s how we keep our employees safe onsite:
Site induction – Employees who have been away during the lockdown and will be returning to site next week will undergo induction trainings to ensure that they will practice the newly implemented safety measures we rolled out

Daily checks – Every morning our leads are individually checking in with staff to ensure that they are healthy. Only healthy employees are allowed onsite.

Daily communications on health and safety – We communicate daily to all employees reminding them to wash hands more often and maintain high hygiene practices.

Physical distancing – The work bubble arrangement we set up during Alert Level 4 will continue. We have re-organised the employees into smaller teams to create their own work bubble to minimise interactions. We will still have reduced number of people onsite by organising office workers to work from home. All production plants will continue to operate with employees being at least 2 metres apart. To cater for the increased number of teams, we have introduced new start and finishing times to stagger their work hours.

Communal areas – We have staggered the teams’ work breaks so that the employees are only interacting with their work bubble during breaks.

Team meetings – Team meetings are held in smaller groups of less than ten people.

Additional cleaning – Cleaning by our cleaners has been tripled. We also provide sanitising products for employees to self-clean and sanitise their workstations each day. We will continue with this high level of cleaning.

PPE – We have supplied PPE (gloves, masks etc) to our employees. This is made available at each workstation to reduce employees’ movement.

Remaining employees
All other employees will continue to work from home as much as possible. Our teams are adapting well and hitting productivity targets while working from home.

Visitors and contractors
To reduce the risk of our employees being exposed to visitors with COVID-19, we have closed our site to external people. Our site will remain closed to visitors during Alert Level 3.

UPDATE – 7 April 2020

Kia ora and greetings, we hope that you all are well.

ETEL – Essential Service Provider

As you are aware, New Zealand has been under a lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic since 26 March 2020.

We have been advised that as a supply chain to electricity networks, ETEL is an essential service provider. Taking our role seriously, we are continuing our operations and the business will stay open throughout the lockdown.

We are here for you

All ETEL sales and customer service employees in New Zealand and Australia are continuing our support to you. They are working remotely from home and are available via their mobile phones, email and web meetings. We thank you for your understanding and support.

Operations

Our operation continues with transformers being manufactured daily. We are in regular communication with our suppliers and have a split supply arrangement on critical components.  We thank our suppliers for their relentless support during this challenging time.

Health, safety and wellbeing

While continuing operations, our employees’ health, safety and wellbeing remain a priority. We have taken measures to ensure that our employees remain safe while working onsite.  We have included our COVID-19 Business Continuity measures for your reference.

Keeping in touch

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your customer representatives.

This is a dynamic situation that we are navigating and managing, and we will continue to provide regular updates and communications to you all.

We wish for you to stay safe, healthy and positive.

 

ETEL COVID-19 Business Continuity Measures under COVID-19 Alert Level 4 in New Zealand

 

Keeping up with the pandemic update

We have created a pandemic response team that meets online daily to review the New Zealand and Australians governments positions on COVID-19. We then update our practices accordingly.

We send out daily communication to all employees reminding them to wash hands more often and maintain high hygiene practices.

At risk workers

We have organised for all our at risk workers to stay at home in order to keep them safe.

Staff on site

Here’s how we keep our employees safe onsite:

Daily checks – Every morning our leads are individually checking in with staff to ensure that they are healthy. Only healthy employees are allowed onsite.

Physical distancing – We have reduced the number of people onsite by organising office workers to work from home. We have reorganised all production plants to ensure that employees are 2 metres apart. We have banned car-pooling banned during this pandemic.

Communal areas – We have staggered work breaks so that there are smaller groups of people in an area at one time. We have re-organised the employees into smaller teams to create their own work bubble to minimise interactions

Team meetings – Team meetings are held in smaller groups of less than ten people.

Additional cleaning – Cleaning by our cleaners has been tripled. We also provide sanitising products for employees to self-clean and sanitise their workstations each day.

Tools – We have purchased more tools to prevent infections through tool sharing.

PPE – We have supplied PPE (gloves, masks etc) to our employees. This is made available at each workstation to reduce employees movement.

Remaining employees

All other employees are working from home to ensure continued delivery.

Visitors and contractors

To reduce the risk of our employees being exposed to visitors with COVID-19, we have closed our site to external people. We will inform you when we reopen the site. We will ensure that when we reopen, the site will remain safe for visitors and employees.

Essential people such as trucks, couriers, cleaners and security are continuing, but are closely managed.

 

UPDATE – 25 March 2020

On Monday the New Zealand government announced a shift in the COVID-19 alert status to a Level 3, progressing to level 4 as of midnight Wednesday 25th March. This means most businesses will close, and only Essential Businesses will continue to work throughout the level 4 status. These businesses will take precautions to ensure that their staff are keep safe.

Transformer supply has been deemed by the New Zealand Government as an essential business, being an integral part of the Electricity Utilities supply chain. As such ETEL has been asked to remain open during the level 4 alert status, to support the critical needs of Electricity Utilities in New Zealand and Australia.

To safeguard our people and keep them secure during this event, we will keep at risk personnel or personnel with dependants at home. We will carefully manage the number and proximity of people in the plant, and we will ensure that any personnel who can work from home do work from home. This will have some impact on our production capacity, however ETEL holds stock of over 1700 transformers throughout New Zealand and Australia, we will be carefully managing our operations and stock to provide the best level of service for all essential works.

We would ask that you carefully prioritise what your needs are, in the way of transformer products over the next 4 weeks, and we would also request information on any capacity or site constraints that you foresee. We will be in contact shortly, and at your discretion, to discuss a way forward together.

If you have any questions please reach out to our sales teams in New Zealand and Australia, or you can contact our Customer Support, who are here to help in any way they can.

We will all remain available remotely during this event. Many thanks and please keep safe.

UPDATE – 19 March 2020

As we all continue to deal with the unprecedented situation caused by the impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19), ETEL has been progressively implementing our plans for managing this developing situation.

We want to take a moment to reassure you that we are taking the appropriate measures to ensure the health and wellbeing of our employees, whilst maintaining high quality business operations to support our customers and industry partners.

Like many businesses, we are reviewing our Business Continuity Plans (BCP) to ensure we can continue to operate in the future. We have assembled a Covid-19 response team who are meeting daily and are working through different scenarios and we will modify our protocols and operations as the situation develops. We are ready and aware and are focused on a safe, long term healthy outcome.

The most effective way to minimise the associated risks of Covid-19 is to limit the contact between people and therefore, our plans have been developed with this in mind.

Meetings, travel and events
• All visitations to our customers have been postponed for the immediate future. We will endeavour to remain in close contact with all of our customers and supply partners through multimedia communications such as email, telephone, ETEL website, video and other digital means.
• All internal or other external events have been cancelled or postponed.
• All business-related international and domestic air travel is now restricted or stopped unless it is essential and approved by the Senior Leadership team.
• We are limiting access to our factories and depots for external providers and contractors.

Elevated hygiene practices at ETEL
• The importance of appropriate hygiene practices has been reinforced to our team.
• Additional cleaning and upgraded hygiene activities are taking place.
• We are reducing face-to-face meetings, instead opting for phone or video calling.
• We are encouraging social distancing as a precaution, with no handshaking or physical contact.
• We are closely monitoring our health and wellbeing of our staff and have protocols in place for immediate action should any reported case of Covid-19 involving our employees, their immediate families or others in close contact, occur.
Operations
In relation to our continued business operations, Covid-19 has resulted in global supply chains being affected and slowing transportation of goods within certain countries, affecting global transport into and out of many countries.
At this point in time, our operations in New Zealand and Australia continue to operate normally. We will continue to do so provided we can maintain the safety and wellbeing of our staff.
Technology platforms and IT infrastructure are being enhanced to ensure that, should we require remote operations for some functions, then we can move to this format quickly and seamlessly, allowing us to continue to provide support to our manufacturing operations and support and advice to our customers.
Supply chain
ETEL is completing daily reviews of our local and international supply chain and we are in continual contact with our supply partners. We maintain significant stock of materials, components and common standard finished products.

Furthermore, we have a programme of split supply for critical components, which ultimately reduces reliance on a single component or material supplier. For the critical items, supply is sourced from dual suppliers, across multiple countries. This approach has been very successful in mitigating supply line issues.

We currently maintain full production and will do our utmost to continue our production capabilities during this difficult time.

ETEL is an essential component in the electricity supply system and we take this responsibility seriously.

Our Customer Services team will continue to provide you updated information and delivery notification of products and other information, as we navigate the changing landscape.

We will closely monitor developments and will act decisively in the best interests of our team and our customers.

For many customers, this is a highly disruptive and uncertain time and our team is here to assist you during this unprecedented situation. We appreciate that some of you may have queries and we encourage you to reach out to your ETEL contact to answer any questions that you may have.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your understanding and support during this challenging time.