Following a relevant announcement on 27-11-2019, the Management of the Societe Anonyme under the name “THRACE PLASTICS HOLDING COMPANY SOCIETE COMMERCIAL ANONYME“ and with distinctive title “THRACE PLASTICS CO S.A.” (called as “Company” hereafter), in application of the clauses of article 17 with number 596/2014 of the Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council as of 16th April 2014, as well as in accordance with the article 4.1.3.1 of the Regulation of the Athens Exchange, informs the investors’ community that the implementation of the internal restructuring plan of Group’s holdings, initiated in the second half of 2018, is progressing. The restructuring plan target is to optimize the production and distribution network of its products and to focus on markets and products that maximize returns.In this context in the second half of 2019, the Group decided to transfer the first needle-punch production line from the wholly owned subsidiary Thrace Linq Inc., based in South Carolina, USA, to the wholly owned subsidiary Don & Low Ltd, based in Forfar, Scotland, aiming to further strengthen Group’s products positioning in the UK and NW Europe markets.
As part of the ongoing internal restructuring plan, within year 2020 the Group’s Management decided the following:
a) The transfer and installation of the second production line of non-woven fabrics (needle punch) from the wholly owned subsidiary Thrace Linq Inc., to the wholly owned subsidiary Thrace Nonwovens & Geosynthetics, based in Xanthi, Greece, aiming to increase its production capacity and sales. The transfer of the production line started in April 2020 and its installation will be completed within the second half of the year. Subsequently, it was decided to terminate the operation of Thrace Linq Inc., and continue servicing the US geotextile market through the Group’s production facilities in Europe and its joint venture in the US Lumite Inc. It is anticipated that the above action will have a positive impact on the Group’s financial results.
b) The disposal of Thrace Linq’s industrial property. The Management is already implementing the necessary actions towards this direction.
(c) The termination of its subsidiary Thrace China. The company is operating as a sales office for the China market, on behalf of Group’s wholly owned subsidiary Thrace Nonwovens & Geosynthetics, based in Xanthi with very low commercial activity in the past few years, as the product sales in China market are performed directly from Thrace Nonwovens & Geosynthetics. It should be noted that this action will have no impact on the Group’s financial results.