Companies face a logistical nightmare in Japan
CHIOTAKIS: Japanese military helicopters are dumping seawater on the troubled nuclear plant to try and prevent a meltdown. And Tokyo is on alert for rolling blackouts this evening. We continue our coverage of the human and economic disaster in Japan now with a focus on how global companies are reacting.
Stephen Badger is the director of Asia-Pacific operations for a the international express shipping giant TNT. He joins us now. Good morning.
STEPHEN BADGDER: Good morning to you.
HOBSON: How many staff do you have in Japan?
BADGER: Just under 500.
HOBSON: And so far, everyone’s safe and accounted for?
BADGER: Yes they are which is very good. And that was critical.
HOBSON: Are you taking staff out of the country?
BADGER: No, we’re not. We have 100 percent Japanese team, and none of the Japanese team want to leave the country. They’re there, they are committed and they want to continue to develop the organization.
HOBSON: What are you planning for at this point going forward? A quick return to normal operations or a long disruption if this nuclear crisis gets worse?
BADGER: Well, two things. Because this happened on a Friday, we immediately said after we realized everybody was safe, we tried to identify hotels or accommodation, identifying ways that we could support the team. That was number one. Secondly we had to identify what shipments were critical, things like health care, things like the clinical trial shipments, which are extremely important. Were they able to be exported on that day, etcetera. So, all of these we identified, and then over the weekend put contingency methods in to recover and put those to the closest local laboratories.
HOBSON: Have you ever dealt with any kind of crisis like this?
BADGER: Not to the same extent no. We’ve dealt with other crises as things came up. we had close to us here, the Indonesia tsunami. Very similar, so yes we I want to say, quite experienced in this area and our business continuity plans in place. We’ve bring those out, we might have to adjust, but they’re in place.
HOBSON: Stephen Badger, operations director for TNT Express Asia Pacific. Thank you so much for your time.
BADGER: Thank you very much Jeremy.
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