The processing company Milarex has this weekend diagnosed two employees in Slupsk located factory with coronavirus. Due to this and the current world pandemic, the company is reducing its processing level of salmon.
“We are still receiving fish, but we are reducing our orders to minimize the risk that we have raw materials that we are unable to process. We are doing more of our buying “just in time,” says Thomas Farstad, CEO at Milarex to SalmonBusiness.
Milarex has earlier on stated to SalmonBusiness, that they pursue to annually process 35,000 tonnes. Thomas Farstad does not want to comment on the amount the company is processing at the moment.
Thomas Farstad also states that they have until now been able to fulfil their orders, but will not be able to from now on.
“The capacity is reduced, so we cannot fulfil all orders. It is too early to say which financial implications this will have. Most important is to take care of our employee’s health, and maintain production as much as possible.“
Thomas Farstad does not want to comment on if the company has gotten fewer orders due to the pandemic. He informs that they have toned down their production capacity since European countries started closing borders and schools a few weeks back.
“I can not comment specifically on our production levels, orders from HoReCa are very low and retail is also showing weakness.”
During the weekend two employees in the same production group at Milarex have been diagnosed with coronavirus. The group of 40, where the employees worked in, are now all in quarantine.
“Two people have tested positive in our production, they are working in the same area of production. There are many groups and zones in our production, we started to prepare for a situation like this already in February. Therefore we are well prepared to handle it, the direct consequences are limited so far. They were not working directly with each other. It is in our opinion not so likely that they have infected each other. We have very strict procedures in the company. When these are followed, the risk is low,” says Thomas Farstad, and adds:
“They are not at work today, these forty people are in quarantine and are presumably being tested by the health authorities.”
Both infected employees with the virus are locals. The processing factory in Polen had 1700 employees before the pandemic. Thomas Farstad does not wish to comment on how many are working at the factory now.
