MAKING MASKS EN MASSE

As hospitals and clinics across Australia feared running out of personal protective equipment amid the outbreak of coronavirus, Australia’s only manufacturer of face masks began working in hyperdrive. Med-Con is a small, Australian owned and operated company in Shepparton, Victoria. After a request from the federal government to increase production of surgical masks, the company started operating 24/7 with three eight-hour shifts a day.

“We were making about maybe two million masks a year and all of a sudden now we’re potentially looking at, with added machines, making as much as 50 million masks a year,” Med-Con CEO Steve Csiszar told the ABC.

Competition from China saw Med-Con’s Australian market share diminish to just five per cent over the past decade.

But as overseas PPE suppliers struggled to meet their own local demand and new supply chains were needed, Australia’s Department of Industry, Science and Technology (DIST) sought to increase domestic production capability. To help the company quickly ramp up production, the federal government sent 14 Australian Defence Force personnel to join the production line and to help repair one of Med-Con’s machines that was not operational.

Csiszar told the ABC that while the army personnel worked “very, very well” for the meantime, the goal was to increase local employment. “We’re hiring people by the day, machines are running 24/7 and we’ve never seen so much activity in Shepparton,” Csiszar said.