Welfare of our Christchurch Customers and Staff

Date: 23rd February 2011

The situation is Christchurch has been devastating and our hearts go out to everyone affected by this tragedy. People from around the country are asking after the welfare of our Customers and Staff, hopefully this communication will go someway to keeping you all informed:

Our Nulook licensee customers have come through without physical harm to people including their families, however different levels of damage have occurred with-in the factory environments.

The position is similar for our NALCO Aluminium Centre and Bradnams Window operation in Christchurch. We are without power at the Aluminium Centre and extrusion is spread like spaghetti, the location isn’t too far from the city where a lot of the damage occurred, the area is cordoned off as a NO GO zone and this includes our Aluminium Centre area, the Centre is closed until at least Monday Feb 28th and possibly longer.

Raylight Aluminium are just around the corner from the Aluminium Centre and limited discussion with Margaret indicates quite a mess inside the factory with fallen extrusion and broken glass. Also there was substantial damage to items under manufacture.

Canterbury Aluminium has sustained damage to the building with a number of large cracks in parts of the building, a number of fluorescent light fittings falling to the floor, along with machinery and equipment damage. Liquefaction has also occurred around the building so George and his team are in the process of cleaning this up first including assessing whether it is safe to turn the power on

Bates Aluminium also have significant liquefaction in the carpark area resulting in significant damage to the tarseal. The inside of the factory appears ok however there is possible structural damage which can not be assessed at present.

Both Nulook Advanced and Nulook Enterprise have come through reasonably well with minor impact as there proximity was some distance from the epicenter

Bradnams Window factory has suffered minimal loss, helped by some precautions being taken from the first earthquake event last year, and also the location. The business is closed until Monday Feb 28th to give Staff time to adjust to what has happened and possibly involve themselves in community cleanup work should their personal circumstances allow this.

Further a number of NALCO staff and Nulook customers have indicated that while they have not incurred significant structural damage with their homes, the contents have taken a significant shake with a high level of damage with more fragile items

Our thoughts are with the people of Christchurch during this terrible time and rest assured we will doing all we can to help.

Yours sincerely

Ron Holden

Managing Director