The “Corona” crisis: Capral Aluminium in Australia operates without any major disruptions

Extruded aluminium manufacturer Capral is continuing to function without major interruptions, in spite of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

The virus has created economic insecurity and uncertainty globally; however, the company has managed to evade most of the impacts. This has been exhibited in Capral’s result for the first quarter’20, which were aligned with the firm’s budget and guidance.

Some minor impacts began to reflect in March’20 when demand for the company’s aluminium products started to slow down. This conflicted with the execution of COVID-19 limitations and social distancing policies in Australia.

Yet Capral was largely capable to alleviate these initial issues through several cost-saving measures. These included 20% reductions in staff salaries with reduced working hours and use of paid or unpaid leave.

The company also decreased the director’s remuneration by 25% and shelved non-compulsory and non-essential spending and capital expenditure.

In April’20, Capral also implemented safety and hygiene measures, such as arranging for non-operational staff to work from home.

These various steps helped the company shun the worst of the pandemic’s crisis. The company also gained from savings earned during the Bremer Park restructure project from last year.

The way ahead, Capral is planning for a continuation of soft customer demand.

The prediction for 2020’s second half has been analysed to see a drop in residential and commercial construction activity. Although, Capral is hopeful on the freshly declared housing incentive from the government will enhance the market for housing materials.

The happening negative impacts of the epidemic, contrarily the positive impacts of government stimulus packages make the future hard to predict. This uncertainty has left the company unable to predict demand and results for the second half of 2020.

Capral has stated that it is not currently in a position to provide full-year guidance. However, the company maintained a positive outlook about the uncertain times ahead.

The company announced that: “We are confident that Capral will continue to trade profitably through these challenging times.”

“Capral remains very well-positioned to take advantage of organic and acquisition growth opportunities in the future.”