Currently the world is in a precarious time, the global spread of Coronavirus has caused countries to essentially shut down.

Healthcare providers across the world have been caught with insufficient supplies and funding to deal with the pandemic effectively, so governments around the world are turning to business to help produce supplies such as PPE for the healthcare system.

Back in the UK the NHS does not have the correct supplies for the NHS to deal with the increased demand of PPE, ventilators and hospital beds.

In an effort to deal with this a lockdown has been put in place and multiple UK businesses have stepped up to help supply the frontline staff on the NHS, so we’ll be looking at some of the businesses that have put profit aside and are dedicating resources to help out.

Fashion Brands Changing Production To Make PPE

Soon after the shortage of PPE was made apparent, the fashion house Burberry announced that they would be using their supply chain and facilities to manufacture hospital gowns and masks for the NHS, beyond this Burberry have also given funding to the University of Oxfords vaccine research.

For the PPE, Burberry sent out a press release stating they were aiming to send out more than 100,000 face masks using their Yorkshire based factory (which usually produces the trademark trench coats Burberry are known for.

National Blinds Retailer Changing Production To Supply NHS

Wickford based DotcomBlinds were one of the first UK homeware brands to change their production systems and redeploy parts of their factory to help produce supplies for the NHS.

DotcomBlinds are using their own Biosafe accredited anti-bacterial material originally intended for use in the production of roller blinds to produce privacy screens for hospitals that will create extra bedspace to safely have more people in ICUs.

DotcomBlinds estimate they can produce and ship up to 200 of these a week from their factory based in Wickford, Essex to hospitals and healthcare settings nationwide in order to help to safely create more bed space for overwhelmed departments.

Car Manufacturers Form A Consortium To Create Ventilators

At the tail end of March a consortium (The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium) led by Mercedes, including multiple other car engineering brands announced that they were not only helping to design ventilators with their engineering teams, but to also use their factories to assist in the ParaPac Ventilators. With regulatory sign off to produce around 10,000 ventilators for the UK.

Alcohol Brands Distilling Hand Sanitiser

BrewDog were one of the first UK based businesses to step up and alter their production facilities to produce supplies for the NHS. As supplies of hand sanitiser were being panic bought the Scottish based brewing company announced that they had begun making hand sanitiser in their Aberdeenshire distillery amid the initial shortage of hand sanitizer, due to panic buying.

By the beginning of April BrewDog stated on their website that they had started to send out bottles of hand sanitiser to the NHS as well as other local charities and at the time of writing have donated over 50,000 units of their sanitiser gel.