In the Midst of a Pandemic

It is perhaps an understatement to say the last few months have been challenging in many ways across the world and no less here at Matthews Environmental Solutions Ltd. Of course, our main priority throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been the safety of our team and their families. That said, it was essential for us to develop new ways of working, allowing for the vast majority of our staff to work from home, whilst still protecting those in key areas of the business associated with supporting the human cremation and pet cremation industry.

With many UK crematoria operating to the extremes of capacity, our ability to maintain service and support has become more important than ever. Meanwhile, supply of pandemic spares kits to our customers has been of utmost importance. In addition, key sites have found that they simply do not have the capacity to support the increase in demand and approached MES to assist in finding a swift solution to the problem. As ever, we have risen to the challenge, focussing on our commitment to our clients, and have worked to design, manufacture, install and commission a number of containerised emergency response cremators which can be easily installed and set to work on a client’s site.

An achievement like this has only been possible due to the commitment and hard work of our entire UK team, who have faced the challenge of such a tight timeframe with many working remotely.

Further, our ability to procure key components became a challenge with many sub-suppliers closed or working at reduced capacity yet we have received immense support from our supply chain throughout this campaign.

Aside from this challenge, it is important to note our activity in other areas of our business. In addition to our human cremation systems, MES remains the most respected provider of pet cremation equipment across crematoria throughout the UK.

The pet cremation industry is a very dynamic one, and the pandemic has not slowed that in any way. Therefore, alongside the challenge to develop and build the emergency response cremators, we have continued to design and build several pet cremation systems from our smaller, standard designs commonly of interest to start-up pet crematoria, to bespoke multi-chamber systems commonly preferred by the most established pet crematoria in the UK and beyond.