Despite reduced production capacities due to the Covid-19 lockdown in Italy, German supplier Continental (Hannover; www.continental.com) is currently producing hose lines for the Italian medical sector in Daverio / Italy, where the group’s ContiTech division (Hannover; www.contitech.de) temporarily restarted a production line. “This is our minimum contribution to the Bergamo and the Italian society to support all the helping hands,” says Marco Tamborini, who has been the manager of the Italy-based production of thermoplastic hoses since Continental took over Merlett in 2019 (see Plasteurope.com of 05.07.2019).

The hoses are made from PVC with a polyester yarn-reinforced polyurethane conductive inner layer and a PU intermediate adhesive layer. Continental is planning to have a strong focus on manufacturing medical hoses for the European market due to the high demand for medical equipment used in respiratory diseases – in contrast to the major slump in automotive supply at present.

Continental is facing major disruptions in significant parts of its business as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 40% of its 249 production sites are temporarily shut down, especially in Europe, North America and South America. In Germany, around 30,000 employees – around half of the local workforce – were on short-time working as of 1 April. The group is nevertheless expecting to come out of the crisis reasonably well. In addition to manufacturing automotive components, the medical and water supply sectors are becoming more of a focus for the company.

A ContiTech spokesperson told Plasteurope.com that not all of its plants are offline. The plastics and elastomer specialist has planned to shut down around half of its manufacturing sites, but the situation is so dynamic at the moment that the automotive supplier has to make new decisions each day.

Preliminary results for the first quarter of 2020 show that consolidated sales for the group were 10.9% lower at EUR 9.8 bn. This figure was on the upper limit of Continental’s sales expectations for Q1 (between EUR 9.4-9.8 bn) announced on 1 April. The Q1 adjusted EBIT margin was 4.4%, down from 8.1% in 2019, and better than the 2-3% expected.

Its Rubber Technologies division – which belongs to ContiTech – generated sales of nearly EUR 4 bn (down from EUR 4.4 bn in 2019) and an adjusted EBIT margin of 9.8% (down from 12.2% last year).

Due to the continuing disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic, Continental is refraining from providing an outlook for fiscal 2020. Its interim report for Q1 2020 will come out on 7 May 2020.