"Our extensive health protection measures are the right way to ensure that our employees, as well as our customers and suppliers, are not exposed to any risk of infection," emphasized CEO Gordon Riske. "The health and safety of our employees and their families is our top priority. At the same time, we are taking into account our importance in maintaining supplies to the population. And we are already preparing to quickly ramp up both production and deliveries to normal levels once the current exceptional situation has subsided."

Kion is playing an important role in maintaining public supplies during the current pandemic. Critical sectors such as healthcare, the pharmaceutical industry, food production, logistics and food retail must be supported in order to reliably supply the population.

During the shutdown, the Group will also create the conditions for a sustainable improvement in the recently strained availability of materials. Suppliers, particularly in Italy and France, are currently either affected by massive disruptions to their production or have even been temporarily closed completely. The aim is to build up larger buffers of parts deliveries by after Easter in order to be able to continue with orderly and efficient production once official restrictions have been lifted.

In Germany, production at the vehicle plants in Aschaffenburg and Hamburg and at the Group's own component plants in Weilbach, Dinklage and Geisa will be suspended in agreement with the respective operational partners during the two Easter weeks from April 6 to 17. Production at the Reutlingen site will be interrupted from April 14 to 24. It is then planned to gradually ramp up production again. The temporary interruption to production and the subsequent ramp-up phase will be "flexibly mapped using various tried-and-tested personnel tools", according to the press release. Among other things, the Group is relying on the reduction of time credits from previous years and - depending on local necessity - also on short-time working.

Forecast withdrawn due to coronavirus pandemic
In view of the uncertainty regarding the further course, duration and impact of the coronavirus pandemic on overall economic development in Europe and the USA, the Kion Group's Executive Board has decided to withdraw the forecast for the 2020 financial year published in the 2019 annual report. "Although the situation in China - as expected - is already developing clearly positively again, the current situation in Europe and the expected development in the USA do not allow a sufficiently reliable assessment of our business development for the rest of the year at this point in time," says Gordon Riske. "We will therefore update our forecast, which did not yet include the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, over the course of the year." as