Intertek : Update On Novel Coronavirus

09 March Update

Intertek's first priority is always the health, safety and security of our people and delivering outstanding service levels to our highly-valued customers.

Our Commitment to the Health and Safety of our Employees

We have issued extensive communications to all our people, in line with World Health Organisation guidance, on how to minimise the risk of viral infection to them and others by taking effective hygiene measures and avoiding situations where the risk of infection could be heightened. We have updated our Group Coronavirus Precaution and Preparedness Policy which is available here and we have reviewed the adequacy and suitability of our business continuity plans.

We have put a complete restriction on international travel by our people out of and into mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea and Italy.

Our Commitment to our Customers

At Intertek, our commitment to health and safety is a foundation which we affirm to all of our internal and external stakeholders. We are working closely with our customers to mitigate the potential disruption to their supply chains caused by the Coronavirus.

Should customers need further information, please contact your Intertek representative who will assist.

Greater China

Intertek has implemented extensive actions to manage the risk of infection within our operations and wherever we work for our customers.

The actions we have taken in Greater China include:

• Health alerts and guidance to our colleagues, including a detailed 'Novel Coronavirus Control and Prevention Manual'.
• In accordance with this manual, we have hygiene and other protection measures in the workplace, at home and at customer locations for field-based colleagues, including:
  • the use of face masks;
  • regular replacement and safe disposal of face masks;
  • the use of hand sanitiser and latex gloves; and
  • disinfection of air-conditioning.
• When conducting field-based Health assessments for factories, vendors or customer sites, we will be asking our partners to first confirm they have no suspected cases of coronavirus and have taken their own precautionary measures before we deploy our people.

While our mainland China business started operating from 10 February, the resumption of normal business has been disrupted by mandatory national and local control and prevention measures which include quarantine periods of 14 days for certain colleagues who travelled during the holiday. Since February 10, we have seen a ramp-up in our production capacity and we expect to be back to normal operations in the next few weeks.

Our Hong Kong operations resumed as usual on 29 January. On 11 February, it was confirmed that one of our colleagues who returned to work at our Hong Kong Garment Centre in Kowloon had contracted the Coronavirus and we took the decision to temporarily close the Garment Centre from 11 February for 14 days. We took immediate action to minimise the impact on our customers' business operations and communicated to them new temporary work arrangements.

Following that two-week temporary closure, the Hong Kong Garment Centre reopened on 25 February and Intertek Hong Kong is now fully operational.

At Intertek, the health and safety of our people and customers is our number one priority and we apologise for any inconvenience the temporary closure of our centre may have caused.

South Korea, Italy

Intertek is taking the same extensive hygiene, control and preventions measures to manage the risk of infection within our operations and wherever we work for our customers as we are in Greater China (see above).

There could be some disruption to our operations in South Korea and Italy caused by quarantine and other local restrictions. We are staying in close contact with our customers to mitigate the potential disruption to the supply chains of our customers' operations.

Intertek Information Update

This is a developing situation; we are continuing to monitor very closely and we will provide regular updates.