Massey Ferguson’s Beauvais plant has restarted production after a temporary closure due to Covid-19.

The assembly lines restarted on Monday following the implementation of changes to the plant and new health measures.

“As we are restarting the production in our Beauvais facility today April, 27th, we will not compromise the health of our employees. The production restart is absolutely critical for the sustainability of the whole business chain but needs to be carried out under optimal and sustainable conditions. This is why this restart has been made possible as we have been able to meet two critical conditions.” said Thierry Lhotte, vice president and managing director, Massey Ferguson Europe & Middle East. “First, we need to be able to guarantee the health and safety of all of our employees through reinforced preventative measures defined with the commitment of Internal Teams, Unions’ Representatives and our medical advisors.

“These measures include temperature check for each employee, safe social distancing, availability of masks and other protection/detection equipment such as face shields and sanitized gel, different work organization, cleaning and disinfecting the environment, not only in the Manufacturing workshop but also in the offices,” explains Mr Lhotte. “On the other hand, and to make sure we can action a sustainable restart, we need to make sure that all of our suppliers, facing the same challenges, are able to supply the needed parts and components to allow production without new disruption. Our Purchasing and Materials Management teams are working everyday with full energy and strong commitment to plan ramp-up again in coordination and close alignment with Manufacturing and all suppliers.

“I’m really proud and confident in the ability, commitment and creativity of our teams to see us through this crisis. Our team spirit and transparent social dialogue with our Workers Unions’ has been a key asset to ensure an agile, safe and gradual restart of our activities in Beauvais on April 27th.” added Mr Lhotte.

“Our AGCO employees are going above and beyond to restart production of the equipment our dealers and customers need for the critical planting and harvesting seasons,” said Torsten Dehner, senior vice-president and general manager AGCO Europe & Middle East. “The Beauvais team did a tremendous job on securing both health and safety conditions as well as solid, robust, reliable, sustainable components supply from our suppliers We appreciate their hard work and collaboration to help farmers keep feeding the world.”