Kobi Ventura, President, Aleader Europe

The Balver Zinn/Cobar group has been affected like all other companies in our industry, whilst our plants have in the main remained open we are committed to the health and safety of our employees. Therefore our employees are working from home when possible until the situation is more stable, we all hope that the newly announced vaccine shows a revival in our industry from spring onwards.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and enforced lockdowns in certain countries, industry has been effectively on short time or closed completely. This has had an impact on all of us, particularly the consumable electronics sector where due to part time working volumes have declined dramatically. We are now only just starting to see a slight increase in material uptake.

Automotive initially was holding up but has since experienced a dramatically drop down of production due to low sales of new vehicles with the exception of electric vehicles, which is still minimal in the overall scheme of things. In fact most sectors have been hit in the same way other than the medical, food, cleaning and chemical industry.

With all the euphoria of a vaccine coming onto the market later this year and through to the spring, we could hopefully see a rapid upturn from the second quarter next year. However do not think we should be over optimistic just yet, as the normal production levels in the majority of our industries may not come through until autumn of next year. The COVID-19 virus is still at the front of everyone’s mind and nobody has yet predicted any developments the virus may take.

The effect of chemical prices has had a major impact on our industry as isopropyl alcohol is being taken by frontline workers for antibacterial hand washes and cleaning products. Therefore fluxes are fluctuating in prices in line with rising and falling prices of chemistry raw materials. Just as prices were starting to come down the recent second wave sent another spike in the chemical prices which we see being around until the new year.

Having said all that we are keeping optimistic that the new vaccine and its implementation will come into effect quickly so we can put behind us 2020 and move into a new era of changes.