PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2020

TOP TALK PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 11/20 www.petpla.net 12 PETplanet Insider talked to Alessandra Funcia, Head of Marketing and Sales at Sukano “We provide a safe environment that enables us to focus our energy on our daily operations” PETplanet: In this series of inter- views, the first mandatory question we ask is: Where are you right now? From where are you answering us? A. Funcia: I am answering from our Sukano headquarter office in Swit- zerland (with a view to the lake and another to the Alps). PETplanet: Switzerland, the headquarters of Sukano, is now also affected by a second wave of the coronavirus. In mid-October, the Swiss Federal Council decided on more stringent measures for the can- tons. Despite the restrictions, it should be possible to continue economic and social life. How are you experiencing the situation at Sukano? A. Funcia: These are strange times for all of us. The “enemy” is around the corner and yet we can’t see it. The current exceptional situa- tion regarding the coronavirus (2019- nCoV) demands action and solidarity all over the world. The safety of our employees, customers, and soci- ety at large is of the highest priority to Sukano. The crisis management action plan drawn up by Sukano Management, which is in place since earlier this year, concentrates on the maintenance of operational activities (Business Continuity Management). It also enables certain employees to work from home or to provide a single office to each employee when neces- sary, in addition to the use of masks and the disinfection of all shared areas in the company. This allows us to both guarantee our ability to fulfil our customer´s needs reliably and with the quality our customers are experienced with Sukano, under the safety and preventive requirements the situation demands, while still ensuring the health and wellbeing of our employees. Our team spirit atti- tude and practices have been excel- lent and we are experiencing the high- est level of mutual collaboration and special dedication and attention from our own colleagues, as well as from our partners! We are all one and we are all in the same boat. One infected person could bring the disease to the company, to our collaborators and to our families. At Sukano, our campaign has never been so in line with our needs and actions: #wecare, #wetake- actions, #wearepartofthesolution. PETplanet: What did Sukano learn from the pandemic? What are the con- sequences for production, customer service and working methods? A. Funcia: We provide a safe environment that enables us to focus our energy on our daily operations. In close consultation with the public health authorities, we take a 4 pillar approach to ensure our safety at work. The cor- nerstones of our approach are:  Personnel Management: minimum number of people in face-to-face meetings when digital communica- tions can be applied  Engineering controls: ensuring con- tinuous, and periodically intensifying, clean environments through facilities management  Administrative controls: managing and controlling the use of offices and common zones  Personal protective equipment made fully available Additionally, we further intensified the synchronisation of our daily opera- tions by splitting our company into four independent teams. One of these four groups works from their home office. This ensures that no one in one group has physical contact with anyone from another in our daily activities. So in case of an infection, the home office team can come back to the produc- tion site and take over for the team that would need to go into quarantine, and operations will continue. During an unprecedent crisis like this, there are big threats, but there are also opportunities. Through this trag- edy, we have been given an enormous opportunity to reimagine what this world and society can be, and it will be on our hands to take this opportunity and build an even better future. We stringently protect ourselves to be able to look into the opportunities from a safe atmos- phere and still work on relevant and up- to-date needs through innovative tech- nologies, such as the recently launched antiviral masterbatches. Our R&D team identified this at an early stage, and then tested it in a specialised microbio- logical lab, where the performance of our products against Feline Coronavirus in PET and PA was positive. PETplanet: In which area of mas- terbatch or additive development do you see the future? Which areas are worth special attention? Are there any planned projects at Sukano? Alessandra Funcia, Head of Marketing and Sales at Sukano by Heike Fischer