Tafisa Lac-Mégantic – Message from the President

Tafisa Canada, Inc. President Louis Brassard has issued regular communiques to customers since a nearby railroad disaster destroyed parts of the city of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and also affecting shipping. Here is the July 9, 2013 letter.

Dear Customers:

I wanted to give you an update regarding our situation following the tragic train crash that decimated the downtown core of Lac - Mégantic on July 6.

Tafisa is the largest manufacturing employer in the region with 350 employees and we are very fortunate that there were no casualties amongst our people however many have been directly impacted by the loss of family members and friends.

Our priority in the days that followed this tragedy was our employees, their families and the community of Lac - Mégantic. At the request of local authorities, we had stopped production temporarily. This preventive measure was necessary because the city could not provide essential services in the case of an emergency.

However, our plant has been 100% operational since July 11 and we resumed shipments by truck on July 9. To offset the impact this event may have had on our inventories, the shutdown we had planned for the end of July has been postponed until further notice.

I would like to address the information circulating in the market regarding rail service and Tafisa shipments. Customers situated in Quebec, Ontario, the Maritimes, the U.S. Northeast and parts of the U.S. Midwest are serviced by truck.

The interruption of rail service does not in any way impact these markets. As indicated above, shipments to these markets have been resumed on July 9 and it has been business as usual since that date.

The vast majority of Tafisa products shipped by rail are bound for markets in the US Midwest, the US South east and Western Canada. These products represent 30% of our total production. Our logistics group is developing a model to enable Tafisa to continue to ship by rail to these markets via reload centres.

We are confident that there should be no impact on our service levels going forward. This plan will be communicated to all distributors and OEMs involved.

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