Companies pool resources to produce 10,000 ventilators

AN ORDER for 10,000 ventilators built by a combination of aerospace, automotive, engineering and medical firms will be announced by the Government tomorrow.

The consortium has pulled staff from other projects to work around the clock on new assembly lines, as well as boost production of an existing ventilator with regulatory approval. Its production rate will be ramped up from a few hundred a month to thousands.

A fortnight ago, the Government appealed for industry to step in to increase production of the life-saving machines used on coronavirus patients suffering respiratory problems. At least 30,000 new ventilators are required in the UK.

The order is being placed with the Ventilator Challenge UK (VCUK) consortium, which has taken Oxford-based medical devices company Penlon’s design and worked out a supply chain which can manufacture parts, build and test the machines at a much higher rate.

Doctors and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) have been “closely involved” in the process. VCUK said it expects “a straightforward and very prompt regulatory sign off after the final audit”. Manufacturing of the new ventilators will start this week from parts currently in production.

Seven other projects are also working on building ventilators, mostly to clean sheet designs. However, these will take longer to get into production as they needed to be tested before receiving clearance from regulators.

One of these groups includes Dyson. It drew fire last week claiming it had received an order for 10,000 of its new ventilator design, despite this being contingent on it getting MHRA sign off.

VCUK is led by Dick Elsy, who said: “This project is a testament to the fantastic people who, in a little over a fortnight, have come together to provide a solution to the challenge we are facing.”

VCUK has also worked with UK medical products company Smiths Group to scale up production of its PapaPac+ portable ventilators, which are built by the company in Luton. The members of VCUK are; Airbus, BAE Systems, Ford, GKN, Inspiration Healthcare, Meggitt, Renishaw, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, Thales, Ultra Electronics, Unilever, Formula 1 teams Haas F1, McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Racing Point, Renault and Williams. Supporting the project are Accenture, Arrow Electronics, Dell Technologies, Microsoft and PTC.