With 2,333 employees back to office, Panasonic Semiconductor (Suzhou) has resumed 90 percent of the production capacity thanks to the strong support of local government, said Liu Feng, a department head, said on March 15.

As upstream and downstream companies in the industry chain have resumed work and employees have also returned to office, Panasonic Semiconductor (Suzhou) was able to ensure the on-time order delivery for an overseas auto client and this has helped avoid a large compensation.

Suzhou, home to the largest foreign investment in Jiangsu Province, has 17,000 foreign-invested companies, among which 4,033 are industrial enterprises above designated size. So far, all industrial enterprises above designated size in the city have resumed work, with 90 percent of the production capacity returned.

The common challenge that foreign-invested companies faced when resuming work was the lack of workers because public transportation was disrupted due to the COVID-19 outbreak. on February 20, Kunshan, a county-level city under the administration of Suzhou, offered the chartered train service to bring works from other regions back to the city, the first such move in Jiangsu. Then on February 26, the city also used a chartered plane to transport workers from Tongren in Guizhou Province to Sunan Shuofang International Airport, an airport serving the cities of Wuxi and Suzhou in southern Jiangsu.

The Suzhou plant of SIG, a leading systems and solutions provider for aseptic packaging, has returned to full production capacity. SIG's Chief Executive Officer Rolf Stangl sent a letter to praise Suzhou's awareness and measures to provide efficient and timely service, expressing the wish to continue cooperation and a win-win development.

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