Posted on 22nd April 2020

At the start of lockdown, as news of furlough schemes and uncertain futures began to spread, the team at Europa, along with many others were rightly worried. So when the government announced that they would be asking UK companies to make ventilators and respirator parts, we made a decision with a dual purpose; to help in the fight against Covid 19 we offered free tooling to any company involved in this manufacturing project, which in turn gave the Europa team a morale boost and a sense of pride that we were “doing our bit”. This was an offer of a package of tools to complete the job, not just free trial tooling. The only criterion was that the manufacturer must show proof of order for the parts before we supplied anything.

We have supported many companies with free tooling during this period, mainly with tooling for aluminium. Typically, we would receive a part drawing in the morning, our Technical Solutions Managers would make a process and tooling recommendation, a copy of the end users order and quantity list would be received in the afternoon, and we delivered the free tools the next day.

 

None of the details of the companies that contacted us have been kept on record as this was a truly altruistic offer and not intended for gain. However, if any of them contact us now we will of course put any business through their preferred distributor.

 

At a time when some suppliers were refusing to top up vending machines, or were unable to deliver next day as their stock is in Europe, it was a gesture that was well received by end users and distributors alike. Let’s hope that nothing like this crops up again in the future, but if it does we would do exactly the same thing every time.

Posted in Corporate news, Market news, Supplier news