COVID-19: How Giovenzana is responding to the crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has placed extraordinary demands on companies. This situation requires companies to pitch in and work together.

It already has claimed thousands of lives, cratered global economies and closed international borders. Leaders around the world are facing three questions: how severe the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak will be for the economy, what companies should be doing to prepare and how businesses and individuals can best ride out a crisis that does not look like it will abate any time soon.

The actions that companies take now are important not just to their economic survival, but also to the health and safety of their employees. Mehmet Resit Karakaplan, Marketing and Sales Director of Giovenzana International B.V. explains how Giovenzana is meeting the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Photo: © Giovenzana

How is Giovenzana coping with the crisis?
COVID-19 has turned into a global crisis, evolving at unprecedented speed and scale. The containment policies aimed at controlling it have changed how we work and what we consume. First of all, Giovenzana is focused on the health and safety of its employees, families and communities. All our employees around the world have been encouraged to work from home. This allows us to continue to provide the highest levels of performance and availability in safety.

Distances have increased in physical and geographical terms. But new technologies allow us to get in touch with clients and prospects to organize meetings and offers. Giovenzana has always been customer-focused. For this reason, our production departments and warehouse units work full-time with all necessary protective measures. We have no cases of COVID-19 among our employees. Giovenzana with its historical strong experience has been able to cope with this crisis.

How have you managed to keep supplying all components?
Giovenzana has four production plants (one plant in Italy, the historical one, two plants in Hungary and one plant in Brazil) and five logistic centres (Italy, India, Dubai, Russia, Hungary, and Brazil). This has given us a great advantage and the power to keep the production and the supply chain process working properly.

Photo: © Giovenzana

What was the greatest challenge?
The greatest challenges were transportation and logistical movements. Globally, all countries were responding, implementing, and changing new rules daily with regard to COVID-19 pandemic situation. As all we know, some of the countries were blocking and closing their borders. For this reason, the greatest challenge was transportation that was out of our control.

How have you organized all of your employees working from home and the complete shut down?
To reduce the spread of infection, some employees can work from home making use of videoconferencing capabilities and virtual collaboration tools much more than ever before. For employees who need to be on site, social distancing and staggered shifts are being used to limit exposure to others.

Curtailing third-party access to physical space where possible and ensuring that safety equipment and sanitizer is used is ubiquitous. Giovenzana did NOT shut down at all during this crisis period. We only stopped production for a few days in some of our plants to clean, sterilize & disinfect them and protect our employees.

Photo: © Giovenzana

Now that a new phase is beginning and new challenges await us, we need to act while preparing for the future. The key questions become, what next and what will the consequences and opportunities be?
We need to fundamentally rethink what creates value, what is important and what role digital innovation can play in structuring a new future.

We are back! Even if we have never stopped! Our aim has always been and will always remain guaranteeing customers’ high levels of reliability and safety by offering certified quality products.

Weitere Informationen: giovenzana.com