Standing with Our Customers During COVID-19

June 17, 2020
Press Release
Standing with Our Customers During COVID-19

On behalf of our DuPont Water Solutions team around the world, we want to thank you for everything you are doing to manage through the COVID-19 pandemic—as much of the world relies on your systems and products for safe water, food, medicine, power and more.  

For some of our customers, we know how hard it has been to stay operational—working not only to deliver an essential service, but also working hard to keep your workforce safe and healthy. For others of our customers, we know how hard it has been to shut down or have a project delayed—if even temporarily—for both your operations and your people. 

At a time when it often feels safer and easier to stay home, our customers are true heroes in the face of this global pandemic.  The world needs abundant, clean, safe water flowing to homes, businesses, and hospitals to reduce the spread of this virus, promote recovery, and maintain health.  And we will continue to need the food, pharmaceuticals, energy, electronics and other goods and services you enable as the world works to recover.     

We also want to thank you for continuing to turn to DuPont for the separation and purification technologies on which you rely.     

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, DuPont Water Solutions has continued to operate safely and in line with regional guidance as an essential business. We have worked hard to ensure our plants have stayed open with a focus on delivering our commitments and reducing our lead times.  In some cases, we have maintained local stock of certain products to help with immediate availability for urgent replacements.   

We will continue to stand with you as the world navigates new realities presented by this pandemic. Here are a few things we are doing to help our customers navigate new challenges presented by COVID-19: 

  • Product Availability: Since the start of COVID-19, we’ve worked hard to maintain our operations around the world to continue to manufacture the resins and membranes you require. Despite the pandemic, we’ve worked to maintain an improved supply position, with improved lead times for some of our key products, including industrial and nutrition styrenic anions, acrylic anions, fine mesh resins, cations, and others. We also have a good range of products from our FilmtecTM reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, and ultrafiltration portfolios. We encourage you to work with your Key Account Manager to manage both your short and longer-term needs—we can work with you on planning and availability of key components. 

 

  • Virtual Training Opportunities: As you know, we offer a variety of virtual training opportunities, with certification, through our Water and Process Academy.  We are crafting new curriculum to help our customers and water operators navigate new challenges presented by COVID-19. To understand what our customers want to learn, we recently sent a short, online survey to all previous participants of our training webinars. While the survey is still open, more than 60% of the first 100 responders have already had  their plant completely or partially shut down.  Therefore, they are highly interested in learning tips and expert guidance on how filtration units can remain idle without impacting the integrity of membranes or resin.  If you would like to share your specific training needs, please visit the survey here.   

 

  • Direct Customized Support: In addition to training opportunities, we also know that alternative operation and maintenance procedures need to be tailored depending on specific materials and resources available. That’s way we’ve continued to support our customers with direct customized support, including troubleshooting, advice, and receiving samples back to our labs. Here are a few additional ways you can access support from our team:  

 

  • Waived Rush Fees: We know that some of our customers had to shut down plants in a hurry, potentially causing membranes and resins to be improperly stored or damaged.  If you are restarting your plant and find that to be the case, we will waive rush fees and work to get you replacement membranes and resin as quickly as possible.   

 

  • Reduced Shipping Requirements: At the start of the pandemic, we moved a quantity of our products closer to our customers, to mitigate shipping issues.  

We are also happy to report that our Midland, Michigan plant has been restarted following the unprecedented flooding in the region at the end of May. As we shared with our ion exchange customers, we shut the plant down following the failure of two local dams to protect our employees and our manufacturing assets. We are glad to say that the flood had minimal impact on our ability to meet our supply commitments and we were able to continue to make most deliveries to our customers.

Thank you for everything you are doing to either keep essential services operational or get your plants back up and running.  If there is anything else we can do to support you in these trying times, please let us know.  Please reach out to your Key Account Manager for any questions and for the most up to date information, especially related to orders and lead times.   

Stay safe and well.    

 

HP Nanda 

Global Vice President & General Manager 

DuPont Water Solutions