National Post (National Edition)
Royal Mint moves from money to masks
OTTAWA employees from the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa left their homes in search of every bottle of hydrogen peroxide they could get their hands on.
Stopping at Walmart and Costco locations all around the capital, they found 44 litres of the chemical, which was enough for the Mint to move forward with something it hasn’t done since the Second World War: retool.
During the war, while Canadians fought the Nazis overseas, the Mint pumped out dial-sights, brackets of eyepieces for large guns and military medals.
Now in a new generational fight, the facility is producing hand sanitizer and face shields to battle COVID-19.
The unexpected idea sprouted from the mind of the Mint’s Research and Development (R&D) group towards the end of March. They, as most Canadians, saw that there was a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals, clinics and testing sights around the country.
“When we heard there was a shortage of sanitizer for hospitals and the broader public sector, R&D looked at it and said, ‘We can do this.’ From that point on, it all snowballed,” said Scott Ingham, senior director of Ottawa Manufacturing for the Mint.
Since the middle of March, the federal institution has put its numismatic — or collectible — coin operations on pause. That freed up a lot of production capacity, ultimately making it possible to rethink how some of its equipment and material could be used to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
So the R&D and engineering teams took a look at possible recipes for hand sanitizers, and realized that one recipe published by the World Health Organization only requires three ingredients: isopropyl alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and glycerol.
Better yet, the Mint already has a significant amount of isopropyl alcohol, which is used to clean the surface of coins before they are stamped. So all the procurement team needed to do was order the two others to get things started.
Simple, right? Wrong. While the shipment of glycerol arrived without a hitch, the hydrogen peroxide was coming from the United States and, weeks later, has yet to be allowed to cross the border.
“That hydrogen peroxide getting stuck at the border was a problem, and that was the day or the day after that (U.S. president) Donald Trump had announced that it was going to be America First” for medical equipment, said the Mint’s director communications, Alison Crawford.
“So a bunch of us decided to go out and find out how much we could find in the community,” she said. “I went to my local Walmart, walked up to the customer service desk and explained what we were doing at the Mint. The woman left her desk, walked me to the pharmacy, and said I could take as much as I want and that I could come back for more.”
Thanks to similar expeditions, her four colleagues and herself managed to nab 44 litres of the product. When paired with larger amounts of isopropyl alcohol and glycerol, that’s enough to produce 1,000 litres of hand sanitizer that will be donated to the Ottawa Hospital over the course of the month.
Now that Health Canada has also given the Mint its stamp of approval to produce and donate the product, teams at the Winnipeg plant should also soon begin producing a similar product, which will then be donated to local health-care providers.
“As of April 6, we had all the material necessary to start producing the hand sanitizer. We have a coating process for collector coins at the Mint that is done in explosion-proof rooms. Those are best suited because they can handle all the chemical products. So we put it all in the mixing tanks there and we get hand sanitizer,” said Fabrice Wong Chi Man, lead engineer at the Mint.
While his team focused on pumping out hand sanitizer, Scott Ingham’s team was hatching a plan to produce another desperately needed piece of medical equipment: face shields.
Seeing as the Mint already had 3D printers as well as machines that can heat and bend metal sheets, the team quickly realized they already had all the equipment needed to build two different models of masks.
All that was missing were sheets of PVC plastic, foam and elastics, which the Mint’s procurement teams quickly purchased. Unlike the hydrogen peroxide, those products arrived without a hitch.
“We’re using 3D printers we have to produce headbands that supports the plastic visor. Teams are also using (specialized) cutters to cut plastic sheets (into visors), and using foam and elastic strips to hold them in place. We’ll be putting that together this week,” Ingham said.
“It took a lot of people to help procure the material, and help do the research to figure out how we could do this with the machinery we have. We have this mini-vansized machine that usually makes really large coins. It strikes a kilogram of silver into a beautiful product or a carousel that goes on a coin. But now it’s bending plastic for face shields,” said Crawford.
Ingham says production of the masks will begin this week, and a first batch will be donated to the Ottawa Hospital by Friday. Ultimately, he expects to be able to produce a “few hundred” masks every week for the foreseeable future.
Even though the Mint retooled its machinery, procured all the necessary material and churned out litres of hand sanitizer and hundreds of face shields in a mere three weeks, Fabrice Wong Chi Man says the whole process was easier than expected.
“We’ve never done this before,” he said. “But I think it’s in our core to innovate. Whether it be retooling for medical products or trying to stay current with the latest technology, it’s in us to do the best we can and provide that value back.”