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Manufacturers find new life in face of a deadly pandemic
By Chip Le Grand and Joshua Dowling
Forgotten remnants of Australia’s manufacturing past are being drafted into the front line of the war against COVID-19 to help hospital emergency departments and intensive care units stockpile surgical masks and ventilator machines.
In the tiny northern Victorian town of Lemnos, named after the Aegean island to which ANZAC soldiers were evacuated from the trenches of Gallipoli, Australia’s only manufacturer of surgical masks has ramped up production to try to meet an increasingly desperate demand.
A worker operates a machine on the protective mask production line at the Mask Factory facility in Hong Kong, China.Credit: Bloomberg
Med-Con general manager Steven Csiszar, who has run the small family-owned company for 30 years, has entered an unlikely partnership with the federal government which involves ADF personnel working in his factory and DFAT officials using diplomatic channels to source imported raw materials.
In the space of a few weeks, Mr Csiszar has gone from managing a staff of two machine operators, each working a single eight-hour shift, to overseeing a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operation, with 24 staff and a mission to produce 30 million masks by the end of the year.
“The answer to how many are we going to need is how long is a piece of string,’’ he told The Age. “We are going to need millions and millions. No one really knows. All we can do is manufacture as many as we can.”
At the same time, a high-tech manufacturer that previously built Holden Special Vehicles has offered to repurpose its business to start producing ventilators.
Ryan Walkinshaw says makeshift ventilators can be manufactured with the same 3D printers his company uses to design and engineer car parts.Credit: Jesse Marlow
Walkinshaw Automotive Group owner Ryan Walkinshaw told CarAdvice that makeshift ventilators could be manufactured by the same 3D printers his company uses to design and engineer car parts from high strength plastics.
“(We) have actually put our hand up to make medical supplies, and primarily ventilators, for Australia,’’ Mr Walkinshaw said. “We have messaged various government contacts to explore this. Awaiting further response. The time to act is now, though, not in four weeks.”
Victorian hospitals currently have about 1000 ventilators, which are critical in the treatment of COVID-19 patients who develop life-threatening pneumonia. Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the state had a further 2000 ventilators on order, along with millions of surgical masks.
The coronavirus pandemic is yet to hit Victoria’s health system. As of Monday, only six of 355 confirmed cases were being treated in hospital and of those, only one patient is currently in an intensive care unit.
However, the speed with which the virus is spreading in the community has alarmed government and health officials who fear our hospitals will be inundated unless more is done to reduce the rate of infection.
“The success of everything that we will be doing is going to be determined by everyone doing their bit,’’ Ms Mikakos said. “Everyone needs to adhere strictly to the advice around social distancing if we are to give our health system a fighting chance.”
Mr Csiszar currently has two mask-making machines running. He is seeking to recommission a third machine and, with the assistance of the ADF, is trying to source or construct a further three machines to increase his production capacity to 50 million masks a year.
He said the biggest impediment was global scarcity of spunbonded, non-woven polypropylene, the primary material in surgical masks. He normally sources his raw material from India and China but, in the face of the pandemic, all countries are prioritising local supply over exports.
Mr Csiszar said his masks were being supplied to the federal government, which will distribute them to the states. He is also in discussion with Victoria and NSW, the states hit hardest so far by COVID-19, to establish a direct line of supply.
He expressed frustration that governments had allowed Australia’s manufacturing sector to diminish so dramatically over the past 20 years.
“This is the discussion we should have had with them in peace time, not in war time,’’ he said. “This is a war and at the moment, we are chasing a bit, because we are trying to get ourselves ramped up to be able to fight the war.
“We’ve been told we need to be world competitive, stand up and fight, drink cement and harden up. All of a sudden they realise we do need manufacturing here, even if it is just to make products to protect ourselves from the rest of the world.”