A note to all our valued customers and stakeholders: On behalf of the Howard & Son's family and staff, we want to thank you for your support and understanding since this incident occurred late on Saturday evening. We can confirm that no one was injured in the incident; all our staff and neighbours are all safe and well. The factory was closed at the time and no staff were on the property.

We have not been able to ascertain the full extent of the damage as yet, on Sunday we insisted that emergency services maintain an exclusion zone around the factory, in accordance with our emergency procedures.

We are working closely with all the authorities and will endeavour to keep our staff, customers, friends and business associates informed as more information comes to hand over the next few days.

We want to take the opportunity to state that as much as possible it will be business as usual over the coming weeks. We will be meeting with our management team and all staff today to ascertain our stock levels and put into place contingency plans to re-build stock levels from our interstate warehouses and external sources. In addition, we can see from the air that some containers have been left undamaged with product contained outside the incident area. So please be patient with us while we work out the stock levels available.

All staff are being briefed this morning and we have no plans to change any of our current staffing levels as a result of this incident, if anything we will be increasing our staff and or our current staff's workload to ensure we deal with this situation in a safe, efficient and professional manner.

Howard & Sons Pyrotechnics Displays have been operating as a fully Australian family owned and operated business for the last 85 years. Our people and our customers are the most important assets to our family owned company and we thank them for their support and in helping us move forward into the future.

Regards,
Andrew & Christian Howard
Company Directors
Howard & Sons Pyrotechnics Displays