Helping protect those on the pandemic’s frontlines
St. John’s and Nova Scotia companies producing PPE face shields
One is a Nova Scotia firm with 800 employees coast to coast that started by making paper pie plates in the middle of the Great Depression 87 years ago. The other is a twoyear-old St. John’s start-up founded by three Memorial University medical students focused on the medical applications of 3D printing that just recently moved out of a basement apartment.
Vastly different backgrounds, sizes and core purposes, but both companies — Hantsport, N.s.-based CKF Inc. and and Polyunity in Newfoundland and Labrador ’s capital — find themselves on the forefront of the effort to the produce face shields, a crucial part of personal protective equipment that has become reliable armour in the battle against COVID-19.
Polyunity began with Michael Bartellas, Travis Pickett and Steven Ryan, now resident physicians but who were students when they founded MUN Med 3D with the aim of encouraging students, physicians and medical researchers to investigate the healthcare applications of 3D printing.
From that came Polyunity, whose original focus was production of medical simulation models designed for both industrial and individual use. In other words, they planned to assist others to create healthcare items with 3D printers.
As it turned out, they became the creators.
Shortly after reaching a partnership agreement with Eastern Health’s research and innovation arm, they were approached about the possibility of making much needed face shields.
And that’s what Polyunity is doing. Ensconced in the former Eastern Health central kitchen on Pippy Place, which has been turned into a medical innovation centre, they are using 40 printers to meet the local need for PPE.
“We didn’t realize in March that our world would be flipped around (and we would go) from medical education to using agile manufacturing to help support frontline workers,” said Bartellas, who is Polyunity’s chief executive officer, but also a resident in head and neck surgery at the University of Ottawa.
While Bartellas does his part remotely, about a half dozen employees, along with some volunteers, back in his native Newfoundland are now producing three to four thousand assembled face shields — with a visor, headbands and straps — every week for Eastern Health
With Bartellas, Pickett (chief operating officer) and Ryan (chief compliance officer) all working in hospitals during the pandemic, they are also getting a firsthand look at how face shields are being used. And the safe work credo in those hospitals has been adopted at Polyunity.
“Signing people into buildings, only having essential people in the work place, those sorts of things,” said Bartellas.
“We had to operate with the idea that everybody (working for Polyunity) possibly had COVID. Not that anybody did have COVID, but it was important to adopt that mentality, being overly cautious about touching things and diligent about cleaning things.”
Workers at CKF operations across the country are familiar with such protocols. Deemed an essential service provider as a manufacturer of food packaging, all five of the company’s plants have been open during the pandemic. However, those in Delta, B.C., and Rexdale, Ont., have also quickly turned to manufacturing face shields in response to a national call to help in that area.
“In less than two weeks, the company designed, tooled up and began pilot manufacturing of the protective gear at the plant in Delta,” said CKF’S vice-president of sales and marketing Brad Dennis, who joined Bartellas as one of the presenters in a Wednesday online seminar organized by Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME).
While the Hantsport operations doesn’t make face shields, Dennis said the Nova Scotia plant is producing items, including clamshell takeout containers, four-cup holders and disposable fibrebased tray platforms, that have seen an “uptick” in demand during the pandemic.
“Online digital ordering is here to stay. I think home delivery is here to stay,” said Dennis, “and so we are developing more platforms than the containers we make today. We’re taking into mind that security and safety are even more paramount for the consumer now and will be in the future.
“We believe there will be a continued uptick in takeout and that in-premise dining will be slow coming back to the levels we saw before this.”
CKF uses pulp fibre, recycled PET and foam products in its offerings, the most wellknown being Royal Chinet paper plates.
Dennis agrees some of those items could actually show up on indoor restaurant tables, at least temporarily.
“That is possible, because there may need to be adjustments in the way hygienic dishwashing is done, for example, and that single-use tableware will be used in it’s place while that is happening.
“We’re seeing that with even trays, especially in longterm care homes. We’re seeing a demand for disposable tray platforms that you would put food on as opposed to the more traditional plastic trays.”
Dennis said it hasn’t been decide if CKF will continue making PPE when the pandemic ends, but isn’t ruling it out. It’s a much better bet that PPE manufacturing will be part of Poly Unity’s future.