SPINNING WHEELS
Local firm moved from car parts to ventilators
The past several months have been a roller coaster ride for PVS Plastics Technology Corp.
The COVID-19 pandemic all but shut down many of the Huber Heights manufacturer’s largest customers. The company makes electric motors and fans or blower wheels that move air in vehicles.
But the pandemic also created skyrocketing demand for another PVS product: A wheel that moves air in ventilator machines — the very machines that sometimes proved to be the difference between life and death for coronavirus patients.
The local plant doubled its production of ventilator parts in response to those keenly felt needs, starting in February.
“We were already making ventilator parts,” said PVS Plant Manager Chad Terrill. “So when COVID hit, you’re absolutely right, automotive just completely shut down. We lost about 60% of our sales.”
PVS has shipped more than
200,000 ventilator blowers since February — about double its normal output.
Tony Rockas, project manager at PVS, said the business also makes insulation for electric motors, another product that was ramped up.
PVS found itself caught up in President Donald Trump’s late March order to automaker General Motors under the Defense Production Act to make ventilators. PVS supplies a GM partner whom Terrill said in an interview he could not name.
“We had to stay running,” Terrill said.
It wasn’t just GM. Honda, Ford, Dyson, Rolls-Royce, Tesla and others all either shifted production to help make ventilators in recent months or considered doing so.
According to a recent paper by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, mechanical ventilation was required in 3.2% of all COVID-19 cases, but nearly half of patients admitted to hospital intensive care units required some form of ventilation.
Finally, PVS was also able to hang on to employees until mid-June thanks to a Paycheck Protection Program (or “PPP”) loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The loans are forgiven to businesses that use the money to retain employees and remain open.
“They fall under every category of what’s happening,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Turner,
R-Dayton, who recently visited the PVS plant on Executive Boulevard.
Terrill said the Paycheck Protection loan of some $400,000 allowed the company to ramp up production and stay in business.
Initially, however, PVS was turned down for the loan. Why? Even though PVS made much-needed ventilator components, the Huber plant is owned by a German business — PVS-Kunststofftechnik GmbH & Co. KG — which ordinarily would have prevented the business from receiving any SBA money.
Looking for help, PVS principals wrote to Trump and Turner to find a way to land the loan.
“They actually fall under one of the exceptions that permitted them to get the loan,” Turner said.
Make no mistake, times are still very tough. Terrill said he will have to let go of a small number of workers as auto production remains slow.
“The automotive industry still has not picked back up,” he said. “We have to look at some things.”
The company usually has about 45 employees. Terrill said he must drop down to about 35 workers.
But only for a short time. PVS still plans to build an automotive products assembly line that will ramp up in January. He remains confident that assembly line will be needed.
“We have to hire about 20 people in January for that new assembly line,” Terrill said.