Like all companies operating globally, Victrex is continually monitoring the latest advice from the World Health Organisation, governments and other authorities.

The safety and well-being of all our employees is the highest priority. We established a COVID-19 committee at the start of 2020 and are taking appropriate precautions and being proactive in our approach, with a wide range of contingency plans already implemented.

These include implementing homeworking for global employees where their role is not business-critical in a production, laboratory or office environment to reduce any transmission risk and stepping up cleaning and hygiene regimes. We have already proactively taken measures to reduce staffing levels to only business-critical employees and those essential to running our plants and shipping products. Business continuity remains essential.

Victrex is part of the Chemical industry, which the UK government includes in its list of essential industries that should remain open. The UK government also includes essential workers as those from the Chemical industry in its guidance. Victrex will continue to produce, in line with this guidance, with our materials having a long-standing history in many critical applications, including within the Medical industry. We will be assessing any further actions needed, to minimize risk and maintain our duty of care, safety and well-being for our employees, while continuing to produce, and provide support to the industry, as may be required. We will keep this under review, responding to official guidance both for our UK and non-UK operations.

Our employees, including those customer-facing, remain contactable as normal by phone and email in home offices, ready to serve customers. We apologise for any inconvenience where we have had to replace face to face customer meetings with virtual meetings but managing with caution is the right approach at the current time. Where a business-critical face-to-face meeting is required, we will adhere to customers' COVID-19 procedures.

Our raw material and sales stocks are appropriate at the current time. We do source some raw materials from China for our UK manufacturing facilities and these are functioning as normal at the current time. In certain global locations we are seeing slightly longer lead times for deliveries of our products to customers as would be expected, together with increased freight costs which will require discussion with customers, but no material impact for customers at this stage.

In summary: Victrex will continue to produce, in line with UK government guidance where Chemicals is defined as an essential industry that should remain open

There is no material impact in our supply chain currently, but we are mindful of potential impacts and will keep customers updated if that changes

Our raw material stocks are appropriate at the current time

We have made contingencies to safeguard production and our supply chain by asking staff to work from home and reducing staffing levels to only business-critical employees and those essential to running our plants and shipping products, or by segregating members of our operations and supply chain team accordingly

Our employees, including those customer-facing, remain contactable as normal by phone and email in home offices, ready to serve customers

Contact:

Tel: +(44) 1253 897700

(C) 2020 Electronic News Publishing, source ENP Newswire