Cover Craft Bayswater transforms manufacturing from boat covers to protective face shields
When the pandemic struck, staff at a Bayswater boat cover business had to jump on board a new venture to survive. Now they’re making critical medical equipment — here’s how they transformed the business in just a few weeks.
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A Bayswater family business is making thousands of personal protective equipment (PPE) face shields for health workers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Cover Craft, a well-established boat cover manufacturing business, supplies boat covers Australia-wide and also export to New Zealand, Europe and China.
Brigitte Easton, who owns the business with husband Scott, said in late February they noticed on Facebook that their US based colleagues with similar businesses were starting to produce PPE face shields as well as surgical masks and gowns.
“We found this both alarming and intriguing so we started doing some research of our own into the possibility of making a similar pivot here in Australia if the need arose,” Ms Easton said.
“The CAD (Computer Aided Designing) technology and automated cutting systems we use in the production of boat covers allowed us to seamlessly pivot to production of PPE face shields.”
She said instead of cutting huge pieces of canvas for boat covers, they were now cutting large quantities of plastic face shields.
Ms Easton said they had guidance from a major Victorian hospital in developing the product, and had obtained Therapeutic Goods Administration certification as a medical device.
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She said they had supplied local councils, dental clinics, allied health professionals and medical distributors Australia wide, and there was high demand for the product.
“We hope to expand our distribution network over the coming weeks,” she said.
“Our goal is to keep our business running, keep our staff fully employed and come out the other side of the COVID-19 situation with the business in just as good, if not better, shape than before the pandemic.”
Ms Easton said demand for boat covers had “quietened off” during the lockdown, but not as much as they expected.
“Our business hasn’t dropped as much as we thought but it still definitely has so we would have had to look at reducing staff hours if we hadn’t made this pivot, whereas we’ve been able to keep everyone’s hours up.”