Malaysian organizations led by world's best glove maker prioritise medical supplies
12 April, 2020
Major Glove Corp Bhd , the world's most important maker of medical gloves, plans to get started on producing face masks to meet rising demand from the coronavirus outbreak, a top executive told Reuters.
The Malaysian company, making one from every five gloves on the globe, will have a facility ready in 8 weeks with a production capacity of 110 million masks a year.
"The masks... may also be obtainable for sale to your existing healthcare customers, as a way to help the marketplace cope with the surge in demand on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic," explained Executive Chairman Lim Wee Chai.
Top Glove's move comes as Malaysian companies modify development to meet a shortage of protective and assessment equipment in the united states, which includes the most amount of reported infections on Southeast Asia with 4,228 cases.
Another Malaysian company Karex Bhd, the world's leading condom maker, said it has modified several of its lubricant lines to create hand sanitisers just after requests from medical buyers.
"Its not a large quantity to start with but we found we could actually begin production within per month following medical trials due to we are a qualified medical product manufacturer," LEADER Goh Miah Kiat said.
Unprecedented demand for medical and examining materials has managed to get harder and longer for countries to source necessary equipment.
Malaysia this week warned of a good probable shortage of reagents, a chemical used in diagnostic assessments to detect the occurrence of the coronavirus.
The ministry said on Tuesday it had only one week's way to obtain reagents and it had been optimising the use of the substance although it tries to secure supplies.
CC Cheah, vice president of the Malaysian Plastics Makers Association, said many of its member companies will be modifying creation lines to make protective and testing equipment to reduce dependence on imports.
A company that usually makes resources for diapers will change its development lines to supply products found in protective equipment, while a maker of extrusion products can make swabs used to take samples for coronavirus screening, he said.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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