Globally, the situation is escalating quickly in relation to COVID-19 and our businesses in the US, UK and Asia are already responding to the higher risks in those markets. In our home markets of Australia and New Zealand we’re moving fast to make a number of changes across our operations.
Lion’s staged COVID-19 response is driven by three objectives:
- To support Government strategies to restrict the spread of COVID-19
- To support our people’s health and wellbeing
- To maintain supply to our customers and the broader community.
Changing the way we work
To support the health and wellbeing of all of our people, those who can work from home have been asked to do so.
For those vital roles in our business that can’t be done remotely – like brewing, manufacturing, packaging, engineering, logistics – we’re putting in place extra safeguards like additional personal hygiene measures, changing work patterns and other social distancing measures.
We’re also reflecting these in our dealings with customers, suppliers and other partners too.
In addition, we’ve increased the scope and regularity of cleaning at our manufacturing sites and put a stop to all overseas and non-critical domestic travel.
Stock supply
At this stage all our key breweries and production sites are operating and we’re taking steps across our manufacturing network to ensure there’s no disruption to supply.
We are managing stock levels and have multiple scale breweries so we don’t expect any disruption at this stage. We have business continuity plans in place should any of our breweries be impacted.
In the meantime, across our brewing operations we’ve taken the decision to close hospitality venues and brewery attractions where they are co-located with strategic manufacturing sites in some of our key markets, such as the US, UK and Australia. We are monitoring other markets such as New Zealand.
This is to minimise movements in and out of our main production facilities to safeguard our people and the supply of our products to customers.
This is a tough time for everyone, so we want to support casual and permanent hospitality team members by continuing to pay any affected staff. We will continue to assess the situation each week.
In our Dairy & Drinks business all our dairy and juice manufacturing sites are operating and we are taking additional steps across our manufacturing and distribution network to ensure there’s no disruption to supply and we can continue to service our customers. We are carefully monitoring supplies and updating availability on a weekly basis and remain confident we are in an excellent supply position.
We recognise the role we can all play in helping to safeguard vulnerable members of our community and help ‘flatten the curve’ while continuing to meet the needs of our customers and consumers.