An Elda footwear company manufacturesabout 20,000 masks weeklyand it has implemented a system to guarantee the safety of both the material and its workers: the apparatuses manufacture the masks from home, which are then sterilized with ozone. They have already provided this equipment to hospitals, province health centers and security forces.
The owner of the firm, who prefers to remain anonymous, decided to take advantage of the material resources of the factory to produce masks, and he hadexpert advice from his wife, a professor of inorganic chemistrywho recommended going one step beyond the usual prevention measures – wearing a mask and gloves – and sterilizing the material.
Suppliers of related footwear industries donated a polypropylene surgical fabric to the company, which, as explained by the company, they sent to the Footwear Technology Institute and the Technology Center to test it, with positive results. The aparadoras elaborate the masks with four layers of this fabric.
The professor focused on the need for the masks to be sterilized. “As much as they were careful with gloves and masks in the factory,they couldn’t control if the person handling the fabric was transmitting the virusThat is why I said that it had to be sterilized, “he explained.
Therefore, the head of the company contacted another businessman who was engaged in disinfection and had a machine for ozonation. Apparently, they have pointed out, high temperatures make the coronavirus disappear. Thus, they first press the masks to 80 degrees and then transport them to the disinfection factory to introduce them into a machine that ozonates them.
First in the factory and then from home
At the beginning, the manufacturing process was carried out at the Elda facilities, but later, as the pandemic has progressed,the company has decided that they are produced from home: About four employees cut the fabrics at the factory and the machine makers sew the masks at home. These are then collected and transferred to the ozonation company.
Thus, they have been producing 20,000 weekly masks for about two weeks, with the ozonation process in operation from the beginning.The first ones were sent to the Hospital of Elche, but later they began to contact them from other centers to provide them with material, according to those responsible for the company.
Donation to hospitals and senior centers
In this way, the masks sewn by this shoe company have reached the General Hospital of Elda, Elche, San Juan de Alicante, senior centers, health centers and the Alicante National Police, San Juan and Mutxamel, as well as pharmacies. “We are trying to help anyone who asks for it,” they said.
“We are businessmen who want to be able to help, the means, machines to cut and sew, and we give as far as we can,” explained the anonymous promoter of this initiative.
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