Demand for gloves rockets

Month-long lockdown in Malaysia upends supply chain and threatens hospitals worldwide

DISPOSABLE rubber gloves are indispensable in the global fight against the coronavirus, yet a month’s lockdown in stricken Malaysia where three of every five pairs of gloves are made, has upended the supply chain and threatens to hamstring hospitals worldwide.

The world’s biggest maker of medical gloves by volume, Top Glove, has the capacity to make 200 million gloves a day but a supplier shutdown has left it with only two weeks’ supply of boxes to ship them in, its founder said.

“We can’t get our gloves to hospitals without cartons,” executive chairperson Lim Wee Chai said. “Hospitals need our gloves. We can’t just supply 50% of their requirement.”

The virus, which emerged in China at the end of last year, has left Malaysia with the highest number of infections in Southeast Asia at nearly 1 800 cases, and 17 deaths. To halt transmission, the government has ordered people to stay home from March 18 to April 14.

Glove makers and others eligible for exemption can operate half-staffed provided they meet strict safety conditions. Still, the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (Margma) said it was lobbying “almost every hour” to return the industry to its full strength to minimise risk to the global fight.

“We’re shut down,” said Evonna Lim, managing director at packaging supplier Etheos Imprint Technology. “We fall under an exempted category but still need approval.”

Dr Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at the New York University School of Medicine, said she was using up to six times as many gloves as normal each day due to the number of patients with Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.

“If we get to the point where there is a shortage of gloves, that’s going to be a huge problem because then we cannot draw blood safely, we cannot do many medical procedures safely.”

With glove supplies dwindling, the US Food and Drug Administration on its website this month said some gloves could be used beyond their designated shelf life. On Tuesday, the US lifted a ban on imports from Malaysian glove maker WRP Asia Pacific, which it had previously accused of using forced labour.

Britain’s Department of Health and Social Care has urged Malaysian authorities to prioritise the production and shipment of gloves that are of “utmost criticality for fighting Covid19”, showed a letter dated March 20 to glove maker Supermax.

Margma is considering rationing due to the “extremely high demand,” its president Denis Low told Reuters. “You can produce as many gloves as you can but then there’s nothing to pack them into.”

Under normal circumstances, Top Glove can meet less than 40% of its own packaging needs. For the remainder, it said just 23% of suppliers have gained approval to operate at half strength.

“We are lobbying almost every hour, we are putting in a lot of letters to the ministry,” said Low. “We are lobbying hard for the chemical suppliers and we want to ensure that the printers are also being given approval and any other supporting services, even transportation.”

Margma said that as they were having to rely on half of their staff to work overtime during the lockdown, costs would rise by up to 30% and that buyers had agreed to bear that.

Malaysia’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry this week said it had received masses of applications to operate through the lockdown, and that it was seeking co-operation from industries to give way to those producing essential goods.

Developed economies are home to only a fifth of the world’s population, yet account for nearly 70% of medical glove demand due to stringent medical standards. At 150, US glove consumption per-capita is 20 times that of China, latest Margma data showed.

Margma expects demand to jump 16% to 345 billion gloves this year, with Malaysia’s market share rising two percentage points to 65%; Thailand at 18%; and China 9%. | Reuters