Business pivots to clear answer: plastic barriers
At Professional Plastics in Stafford, employees are working 12-hour days to keep up with demand. But customers are no longer clamoring for the seals and mechanical parts that used to be the company’s bread and butter.
The company is now manufacturing and distributing clear plastic barriers of all shapes and sizes — mountable panels to separate office desks, small U-shaped pieces to fit around student desks, bubbles with strategic openings to separate doctors from the patients they’re intubating. There are face shields and shields that slide between chairs in waiting rooms, taxi cab dividers and dividers that split a cafeteria table into miniature cubicles.
“The demand was instant,” said Michael Meade, business manager at Professional Plastics, about the surge in requests that began when community spread of the novel coronavirus was reported in the Houston area this March. “People were trying to react as quickly as possible.”
As offices and schools prepare for the return of workers and students, they are the latest to need ways to keep people separate while resuming a semblance of normalcy, and a group of Houston businesses are ready to meet that demand. Companies are making and installing clear barriers to diminish the exchange of the air people breathe,
“The demand was instant. People were trying to react as quickly as possible.”
Michael Meade, business manager at Professional Plastics
stickers indicating safe distances at which to stand, signs to announce reopenings and temporary walls to split up once open conference rooms. All of it is designed to be be removable when the pandemic has passed, showing both the investment organizations are ready to make for the “new normal” and the hopes that the old normal will quickly return.
Core Office Interiors, a Houston business that helps companies design, procure and install office furniture layouts has shifted its focus from furnishing newly built commercial projects — many of which have been put on hold because of the pandemic — to retrofitting existing spaces.
For instance, when Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District was looking for a quick and affordable way to help students stay separate when they return to campus, Core staff arranged for plastic trifolds that could be carried from class to class for students to set up on their desks, said Brad Wells, a partner in the business.
And when Centurion Pipeline was searching a way to make its office, which was designed for collaboration, a little more separate, Core Office Interiors installed plastic screens that attached to desks and tops of cubicle walls.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends transparent barriers to separate students and employees in situations where social distancing cannot be avoided — such as in front of reception desks and in between sinks — it does not list physical barriers between desks as one of its precautions. Instead, it recommends modifying seating arrangements so people sit at least six feet apart and closing down communal spaces such as dining halls entirely.
In addition to clear plastic barriers, the company has seen demand for work booths (a bit like a cubicle, but walls of glass that can reach the ceiling), sleekly designed hand sanitizer stations and even work-fromhome packages, in which companies provide employees with a menu of options to spend a stipend on, such as sit-to-stand desks, power adapters and ergonomic chairs suited for residential decor. “You don’t want an ugly black chair,” said Wells.
The demand has gone up so much that companies that once specialized in products catering to energy, aviation and other industries have pivoted to help businesses adjust to the pandemic.
For example, Houston Custom Metal Works, which designed the 15-foottall steel gateway to the esplanade on Navigation, is now embracing plastics, which it is fashioning into protective screens for Whole Foods, Marriott and other clients. Etch Houston, which had specialized in signage, is now making stickers showing people how far to stand apart and plastic sneezeguards for schools and offices. Regal Plastics, which had previously used acrylic to make things like podiums and aquariums, has also begun manufacturing sneezeguards, with employees working overtime to meet demand from schools and other clients.
“We’ve hired new talent,” said Brandon Barr, general manger of Regal Plastics. “It’s nonstop.”
So many businesses are clamoring for the acrylic and polycarbonate that clear plastic barriers are made of that prices have risen and manufacturers that do not already have the materials in stock are waiting months to receive new orders.
The Houston businesses that are making clear plastic barriers seem to have amassed large enough supplies of the materials that the wait time is not an issue. For example, Professional Plastics’ Houston area location, which used to keep $10,000 worth of acrylic onhand before the pandemic, now has in excess of $1 million worth ready.
That has allowed sales to nearly double, despite demand for some of the company’s products declining during the pandemic. Regal Plastics has seen sales triple.
“We feel very blessed,” said Meade of Professional Plastics. “With people’s health at stake … there’s a motivation and incentive like there’s never been before.”
“The world basically changed overnight,” Barr said. “And we just changed with the world.”