“Our guess is that the world’s top priority will be to better protect our environment, and at Fives, we are determined to become an active player in environmental commitments in the post-COVID-19 world.” - Aurélie Fillon, VP Services, Fives - Aluminium division.

Graduated from Edhec Business School in Lille in 2000, Aurélie has been first working as an Auditor at Ernst&Young before joining Fives Group in 2004 as Financial Controller at the Head Office. In 2007, she became Financial Control of Fives Solios before being promoted to CFO. In 2018, she moved to the position of VP Services of the Aluminium division of Fives, supervising four Services Companies (Canada, Australia, South Africa and the Middle East) plus the Europe Front office.  She is leading the Services strategy and its implantation.

AlCircle: How COVID-19 changes the outlook for 2020 for the aluminium industry?

Aurélie Fillon: As everybody knows, the situation is for now very complex for the producers of aluminium. Despite the drop in the demand of aluminium, the production of aluminium could not have been stopped and therefore the stocks of aluminium should increase in a context where the Aluminium LME price has fallen significantly to below US$1,500 /ton.

AlCircle: How much has this pandemic impacted your business?

Aurélie Fillon: The lock-downs and international travels restrictions have forced us to change our ways of operating.

We have remained mobilized to support our clients by continuing our operations and supply of spare parts and by implementing remote assistance.

We have implemented specific measures to keep all our companies running worldwide while preserving the health and safety of our employees. Our teams are working from home when possible. If not, they are at the offices, workshops or clients’ sites following very strict HSE measures.

On top of that, we are prioritizing the deliveries of OEM critical spare parts to our clients and we are promoting remote solutions – remote assistance and commissioning and remote training. We have accelerated their implementation successfully used for instance to audit a special crane in the Middle East. We have also quickly developed Webinar Trainings Modules and eLearning-based Training Programs (Web courses)

AlCircle: How different do you think the world would be in a post-COVID scenario?

Aurélie Fillon: Our guess is that the world’s top priority will be to better protect our environment, and at Fives, we are determined to become an active player in environmental commitments in the post-COVID world.

Fives is already committed to providing its customers with technologies and services to meet environmental challenges in terms of carbon footprint and gaseous emissions.

As a key partner of most primary aluminium producers, we strive to optimise the performance and reliability of our solutions to reduce the CO2 emissions generated by the primary aluminium production. We have developed unequalled performance of our fluorinated emission abatement solutions, to reduce HF emissions (a contaminant for the environment with negative impacts on part of the vegetation and livestock) up to 50%. Through our state-of-the-art anode production solutions and our equipment for electrolytic cells, we are also contributing to reducing both carbon consumption and anode effect rate. The best illustration of this holistic quest is the Amelios Suite digital solution, aiming at providing aluminium producers all key indicators and process parameters throughout the anode lifecycle, to improve anode quality and resistance to oxidation, leading to lower CO2 emissions.

AlCircle: Do you foresee any changes in the way you reach out to your customers now?

Aurélie Fillon: The international travels restrictions have highlighted the strength of our network of services companies around the world; we are based in Canada, in the Gulf – both Bahrain and Dubai, in South Africa, in Australia, in Russia and China. Even with these restrictions, we are still able to deploy technical experts in most of the client’s sites and we intend to keep on developing these services companies to better assist our clients, with the remote support from the top experts of our OEM companies when possible and necessary.

AlCircle: Have you developed/implemented any mitigation plans and strategies to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on operations?

Aurélie Fillon: We have made sure to keep on servicing our clients and to remain their key partner during these crisis times.

We have defined HSE measures to preserve the health and safety of our employees and third parties.

All our workshops around the world are opened and are producing spare parts or repairing some equipment. Our teams are making sure that our critical spare parts are delivered on time to our clients and that the engineering is progressing on all our on-going projects. Our technical experts are working on sites or remote mode when requested.