Businesses and individuals are doing their bit to boost protective equipment supply levels
NHS staff and key workers are in desperate need for personal protective equipment so these people are doing their bit to help
We can think of no more important place for it than health care professionals.
ALEX WATERS Mid Sussex Timber Merchants
As a part of the national effort to provide muchneeded personal protective equipment in the fight against COVID-19 businesses are stepping forward to help.
A number of businesses from across the Sussex area have been putting on hold their usual production and are instead turning their focus to making masks, sanitiser and a whole range of other protecting equipment.
Based in Rusper is Foam Direct, which cuts foam to size for its customers.
Since lockdown it has started making headband foam products for various parts of the NHS across the country.
Eliott Flack, who owns Foam Direct, said: “We felt that by changing our line of work and customer base temporarily, we could contribute towards the hard work that NHS workers are currently facing.
“By supplying these in huge numbers (60,000 with another 140,000 to go... at the moment) we can hopefully support the NHS with the high pressure and high demand of supplies at this time.
“We’ve achieved this by working directly with Southern Foam who are an independent foam supplier local to us.”
Mid Sussex Timber (MST) has provided a range of items, including goggles, safety glasses and face masks, in a bid to tackle the shortages faced in the healthcare sector.
The family run business, which last year celebrated its 90th anniversary, has its headquarters in Forest Row and further branches in Crowborough, East Grinstead and Haywards Heath.
Alex Waters, Mid Sussex Timber Merchants’ operations director, said: “We were delighted to help with the donation of PPE.
“We can think of no more important place for it to be than with healthcare professionals at this difficult time.”
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, based at Goodwood near Chichester is also producing face visor kits from the same factory that manufactures its fleet of luxury cars – with the same high standards of quality and safety.
Facilities at Ricardo in Shoreham have been repurposed as assembly and logistics centres for the new face shields.
The face shields will be donated free of charge to frontline NHS workers and care homes and is being produced to a bespoke Ricardo design, leveraging its design, engineering and manufacturing expertise. A prototype was delivered by the company’s in-house rapid prototyping team and facilities. However, it was quickly realised that rapid prototyping would not provide the volumes of face shields needed or at the speed required.
Ricardo has used its manufacturing supply chain expertise to engage with an injection moulding partner, to create a tool capable of high-volume manufacture.
Using this bespoke tooling, and its engineering design expertise, the team took the opportunity to refine the original rapid prototype design of the face shield for enhanced comfort over extended periods of wear, inviting local NHS doctors to test the new face shield design for comfort and wearability.
Steve Dyke, managing director for automotive and industrial, said: “As a world-leading engineering consultancy, Ricardo is known for its expertise and capability in innovating, adapting and bringing products to market at pace, and as engineers we live to solve challenging problems for our customers.
“Our people have been anxious to use their engineering capabilities, skills and knowledge to find solutions to help protect frontline staff in the NHS and other key workers.
“The team has worked tirelessly to enable us to be able to go into production in a matter of days, and we are proud to be in a position to use our engineering capabilities for this essential task.”
Martin Starkey, managing director for performance products, added: “Our people are renowned for their expertise in highvalue manufacturing, and they have brought their trademark passion, care, dedication and commitment to assembling face shields. We are proud of our people’s response in volunteering to be part of this work, and also that we are able to make the most of our facilities at the Ricardo Shoreham Technical Centre. We look forward to delivering these muchneeded PPE products to the NHS and care homes as soon as possible.”
Mark Oakley owns a landscaping business, but has had to go into selfisolation for 12 weeks due to his health.
This has resulted in him having to shut down landscaping, but he has started a woodworking business making small gifts and bespoke furniture.
He said: “It is also allowing me to make some small mask clips to donate to local hospitals from my workshop in Shoreham.
“The work with the clips has spiralled. I got a large batch made for Worthing Hospital and through the power of Facebook, other people have been asking, which ended up with me doing a small GoFundMe page aimed at friends to help chip in for materials and it’s all growing.
“I have been asked for the clips by various places such as care homes and hospices as well as other hospitals.”
Graham McKnight from Durrington works at Worthing Hospital as a Macmillan clinical support worker. His fiancée Erin Gee’s mother, Christine, from Worthing, is making bandanas for care home staff.
He said: “She is normally employed to make seat covers for commercial aircraft companies.
“However she has recently turned her crafty hands to making ‘bandanas’ for wearers of PPE masks .
“The mask strings can be attached to the buttons on the ‘bandanas’ rather than behind the ears to save from irritation.
“I have telephoned the New Grange Care Home (10-16 Homefield Road, Worthing), who said that they would happily accept and use
Christine’s headbands, as care staff there also use PPE that may irritate behind the ears.”
Generation Distillers based in North Chailey has started making hand sanitiser to help during the coronavirus outbreak.
Claire Kentish Barnes is the distiller and owner. She said: “We heard that other bigger distilleries were supplying the NHS and emergency services with hand sanitiser and we thought it would be great if we could do the same.
“We asked via local social media forums whether there was a need in our local communities and the response was overwhelming.”
The team followed the formula designed by the World Health Organisation.
“The formula is a very simple one, but I am a distiller, not a hand sanitiser producer, so we had to ensure that we were doing everything correctly to keep people safe which involved working to HMRC, HSE guidelines and with our local trading standards team.”
From inception to their first delivery it took two weeks. For every litre they sell to the public they will give a litre to those in need.
Brighton Gin has partnered with the Lewes and Isle of Harris-based premium skincare producer, AS Apothecary. Amanda Saurin heads the team of experienced skincare specialists who, with a bit of help from Brighton Gin, created a skin-safe, vegan hand sanitiser.
Jane Barrie owns alterations and clothes repair shop Jane’s Stitches in Tower Street, Rye.
She said: “I closed the shop due to the virus, to protect my staff and my clients.”
Since then Jane has been making face masks for the
volunteers of the Rye Mutual Aid group.
She said: “When the group started up and needed people who could sew face masks for the volunteers who get shopping and medication for vulnerable people in the Rye area, I decided to help out.
“So now I’m making face masks and leaving bundles of elastic and bias binding in bags in a larger bag in the porch of the shop.
“That way anyone who is sewing for the RMA can help themselves to the materials to make the face masks.”
Joe Nguyen is director at Starlings Art & Craft Collective in Bexhill.
He has started a campaign to make 1,000 face masks for non-medical key workers and carers through www. starlingsgifts.co.uk
He said: “We saw the emergency need. We knew we did not have the funds or the time to get all the governmental approvals for our masks but we wanted to also take the pressure of the N95 mask shortages out there and concentrated on non medical key workers – such as social care sector. We wanted to help.
“Stage two is deployment. We are now rolling it out to the requesters who are in desperate need.
“We have stage 3 which is to handover to any other groups to start their own 1,000 face mask campaign in their local area to match their community need.”
Anna Haskell is the owner of South Coast Mermaids and said: “As I can’t teach my mermaids, I’ve been sewing scrubs for a local GP practice.”
National trade body the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) coordinated a national response across its membership, appealing for donations .
Proteus Packaging in Upper Dicker near Hailsham usually manufactures packaging such as boxes.
Many of its usual customers are retail, and with lockdown closing all but essential shops its owner took the decision to make face masks for the NHS.
Pete Davie, plant manager, said: “We are a small company but don’t like to say no to a challenge.
“Within two to three days we had samples and prices to see how viable it would be and then started production. It was amazing turnaround and really satisfying to send out 5,000 to Eastbourne and Hastings hospitals.”
It is an unprecedented situation but it is reassuring to see how businesses and individuals are coming together to support key workers, volunteers and the NHS.