Mississauga, ON, March 19, 2020 – Cargojet Inc. (“Cargojet” or the “Corporation”) (TSX:CJT) announced today a set of extra-ordinary measures to help customers manage higher volumes and keep the flow of goods moving within and across Canada and the USA.
COVID-19 pandemic has changed lives for all Canadians as we know it. The situation remains fluid and families and businesses are adjusting to this new reality on a day-by-day basis. The need to keep the supply-chains moving is more critical than ever. As physical stores either temporarily shut down or limit their hours, Canadians are increasingly depending on delivery services to fulfil their essential needs.
Cargojet is a critical service provider in the Canadian supply chain and is experiencing significantly higher demand and volumes from e-Commerce and health care and essential supplies. We are taking several significant steps to ensure that we can continue to play an important role in fulfilling this increased overall demand. As a result, we are announcing the following measures:
- Health and Safety of our Team: Given the nature of our business, substantially all of our team cannot work from home. Therefore, first and foremost, keeping our team safe and healthy is vital to maintaining our operations. Many of them are facing unexpected child-care needs due to school closures, higher prices of daily essentials, shortages and worries about groceries and other daily costs. We are taking immediate steps to help alleviate some of these worries by adding a temporary daily cash allowance and additional benefits support for every Cargojet team member.
- Hygiene, Safety and Security of Cargo: We have rolled out enhanced health checks at each of our facilities and are working with our teams to increase cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting procedures throughout our network including our aircraft, cargo containers, packages and facilities. We are following public health guidelines of frequent hand-washing and social distancing to keep our teams safe and productive.
- Adjusting capacity to serve Domestic and Transborder needs: We are redeploying aircraft that are currently serving International scheduled and charter routes back to our Canadian Overnight network and to support the integrated supply chains of Canada-USA-Mexico routes which are essential to maintain timely access to essential supplies. We are preparing to handle additional volumes through our day time flights in case volumes exceed the overnight network capacity on certain key routes. We are well equipped and planning to handle any surge in volumes should that be necessary by adjusting schedules and routes.
- Northern Communities: Our network supports key gateways to the Northern communities some of which are only accessible by Air. With significant curtailment in passenger airline capacities, moving cargo to the Northern communities is even more important. We are paying special attention to ensuring that supply-chains to Northern communities remain strong.
- Increasing co-ordination with customers: We are communicating on a daily basis with our key customers to ensure that we have the necessary capacity, schedules and service levels to meet the increased demand to supply essential air cargo services.
Cargojet is very well-prepared and is doing everything possible to keep the critical supply-chains moving within Canada and on our Transborder services. Everyone on the Cargojet Team is fully committed and proud to be working diligently to provide these essential services to our customers and ultimately to those that need it most.
