I wanted, firstly, to send my best wishes to all PPA members and I hope you and your families are well.

Secondly, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank my staff, who have reacted better than I could ever have imagined, and my customers who have been patient, flexible and understanding. I am very lucky to have them both!

There are two sides to Air Business: the Distribution arm and the Subscriptions bureau.

Starting with Distribution, wow… it’s been challenging! The operation remains in full flow, however we are following Government guidelines to the letter, practicing hand washing, social distancing and self-isolation where necessary. All staff that can work from home are doing so and they’ve been provided with laptops and phones to enable a relatively seamless transition. My IT department has been working flat out to roll out home working and I take my hat off to them for what they have achieved.

Each day, we are evaluating the latest news and restrictions around moving our customers’ mail around the world and adjusting our routings where needed. A good example of this was air freight into the US for our periodical registered service. The premium became so large that we negotiated a sea freight option, which added a bit more time to the delivery, but meant we could achieve a consistent service with no increase in cost. It is getting more challenging though: this week, in line with Royal Mail's announcement, we have suspended services to a number of countries and are asking our customers to exclude these from their mailing data and also reduce their print runs where appropriate. We are updating our customers on a daily basis, ensuring they are fully aware of the latest market changes and how we are responding to these in order to minimise service disruptions. We have also set up a dedicated webpage, where our customers can find all the latest information in one place.

Our Subscriptions bureau have been nothing less than miraculous in terms of ensuring continuity of service. We had the foresight to purchase a large number of laptops to replace some of the end of life desktops and this has been invaluable in terms of enabling our Customer Service teams to work from home and deal professionally with subscribers from around the world. Quick thinking helped us transfer our Far East Manila call centre volumes, as they went into total lockdown, through to a newly created night shift in the UK with little disruption. Similarly, at our US call centre, most staff are now working from home and proving to be totally capable of responding as they would normally.

Inevitably, we are seeing an impact from this terrible situation in terms of cancelled or postponed mailings, reduced pagination due to less advertising, cancelled shows and conferences and so on. These are all totally understandable but none the less very sad for all concerned. I pray we get back to some sort of normality as quickly as possible.

Our shareholders An Post, The National Post Office of Ireland, have been extremely supportive to us despite their own challenges. They have always been big contributors to our business and I am pleased we have them at this time; it’s very reassuring.

Finally, we are doing all we can to assist our staff in terms of wellbeing and supporting them through these difficult times. To reiterate, I am eternally grateful to them for their professionalism and commitment; it has been truly breath-taking and reaffirms to me what a great company I work for.

Kind regards,

Adam

Adam Sherman

Chief Executive Officer

Air Business LTD