Krah in times of Corona

On the 20th of April, Germany has loosened its strict Corona measures, which were taken in the last few weeks. Nationwide, each state has its own regulations, however, they are all similar. Shops up to 800 m2 are allowed to reopen under special security measures, which also applies for car, bicycle and book dealers, regardless of the sales area.

However, contact restrictions will remain in place until 3rd May. Nurseries, kindergartens, most schools, hairdressers, restaurants, gyms, museums and amusement parks will remain closed, and major events will even be prohibited until the end of August – at least. In addition, the ban on services in churches, mosques and synagogues remains in place, and private travel and visits should be avoided.

Some people say the loosening is long overdue - others say it’s much too early. I can understand both parties.

On one side there are managers, self-employed and employees who have not earned a cent for weeks and still must cover their costs. Catering businesses and restaurants that would have made an important part of their income in the last few weeks, industrial businesses where production has come to a standstill - many businesses are running out of money or are already bankrupt, many more will be affected.

But I also understand those who think that the loosening is too soon. There is great concern that the citizens are now running wild in shops, streets and parks, or start barbecuing in the garden with friends or having parties again.

We are far from overcoming the crisis - if you look at the figures, only a fraction of the population has been infected with Covid 19. We will only survive this crisis if there is a "herd immunity", which means that the majority of the population has formed antibodies against the virus or there is an effective vaccination. Only recently, the R0 value in Germany dropped below the magic number 1 to 0.7, which means that 10 infected people only infect 7 healthy people. The number of new infections is thus shrinking by almost 30 percent daily. This positive trend would have to continue or improve for several weeks before we can take a deep breath.

That’s why I have decided that our employees will continue to work in their home offices for the time being and that we should allow shift work in production to continue for now in order to minimize the risk of infection as much as possible. This has all worked very well so far - production continues as before, we have enough orders and the supply chains are fortunately working well, however with minor delays. Our forwarding agents and shipping companies are hardly affected at all - this is a great luck for us, which we appreciate very much.

But of course, the virus also limits us: since 95 percent of our machines are sold to foreign countries, we are currently still facing some problems. One problem is that assembly and service work cannot be carried out abroad because our specialists are not able to leave Germany or enter another country.

Video calls, as they are easily handled by our home office staff, are more difficult or even impossible in the mechanical and plant engineering industry when questions or problems regarding the machines arise and when usually specialists would travel to help the customers solving the problems.

Also our sales staff is currently very limited. Travelling abroad to acquire new customers or look after existing customers is not possible at present and will not be possible for the time being in the foreseeable future.

At present, I do not expect the situation to return to normal within the next 6 to 9 months. We are now trying to prepare ourselves for this. We will try to set up the offices so that sufficient distance can be kept at all times, the employees in production will continue to work in shifts so that they have as little contact with each other as possible and we will work out plans for the next few months. Even though everything is going quite well for us so far, I think that from August or September onwards it may become difficult for us too - for example, the Czech Republic wants to close its border for at least one year, other countries will probably follow.

But the day will also come when international business relations will go back to work normally again, as will all public life. There is one good thing about all this - the Corona pandemic is calling into question many things that until a few weeks ago seemed to be taken for granted. Perhaps we can even learn something from the crisis. I also think it is good how the German government is dealing with the crisis. The tough, but nevertheless very prudent lockdown has worked well so far; there have been no chaotic and uncontrollable scenes like in some other countries. The German government has also shown that it stands behind its economy by providing emergency aid for smaller companies. Hopefully this will continue until we all have overcome the Corona crisis.

Surely this is a difficult time for all of us - everyone longs for normality and economic stability - and no one knows how and when this will be. We will all have to face the coming situation and accept it. In many ways, resilience will be vital in the coming weeks. For our society and for us personally. On the one hand, resilience refers to the ability of companies to survive crises. Even though we have been producing resistant pipe systems for more than 50 years, we now have to prove once again that our company itself is also resistant and that the crisis will not throw us off course. Resilience also refers to the psychological resistance of a person. We must learn to deal with external disturbances so that they have less impact on our mental health. Put simply: If we can still get something positive out of an almost empty glass, we are resilient.

So let's all work a little bit on our resilience, so that we can hopefully return to normality soon, full of self-confidence and with a positive view into the future!

Kind regards,

Alexander