Bringing Welsh industry together to respond to Covid-19 Across Wales, businesses have been adapting and innovating at an unprecedented scale and pace to combat the spread of Covid-19 and help treat those affected by the virus. Welsh businesses have understood the real need to think differently, operate differently and deliver differently to meet immediate needs - repurposing their operations and resources to manufacture urgently needed items. Collaborations between industry and NHS Wales have been crucial to making these success stories possible and ensuring much needed resources get where they need to be. Life Sciences Hub Wales has a legacy of supporting collaborations and innovation between industry, academia and health and social care, and has been appointed by Welsh Government to manage all industry enquiries to support NHS Wales during the Covid-19 outbreak.
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This support has helped Caerphilly company Transcend Packaging, which manufactures paper straws for quick serve restaurants such as McDonald’s, to become certified to produce PPE during Covid-19. Transcend, a sustainable packaging specialist, has converted operations at its manufacturing base to create millions of protective face shields that are being supplied throughout the UK and across the globe. Made from reinforced paper boards and recyclable materials, the visors are designed for single use and can be recycled. As well as being suitable for frontline services, the recyclable nature of the shields plus their relative low cost and ease to produce mean that they could play a key role in supporting the return back to work and the ‘new normal’, providing individuals with an extra layer of protection in social situations.
Working with NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership and the National Procurement Service, Life Sciences Hub Wales is processing all initial proposals and undertaking due diligence on behalf of the NHS before they were referred on to procurement services. This has supported health and social care buyers to manage and triage the high volume of supply offers being received, allowing them to focus their attention on the most appropriate offers of support.
Transcend’s switch in production was made possible after the company contacted Life Sciences Hub Wales for assistance to better understand the certification requirements its products would need to meet to allow them to be offered to the NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership. The organisation worked closely with Transcend to help it adapt its production line and ensure its face shields met all requirements, including the crucial CE certification. This then allowed them to gather the additional information needed to refer Transcend to NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership.
Over the last few months, Life Sciences Hub Wales has processed thousands of enquiries from businesses, successfully securing much needed products and resources for the NHS supply chain including personal protective equipment (PPE), hand sanitiser, medical devices and testing kits.
As a result, over 3 million of the shields have already been manufactured by Transcend, with over 1.5 million going directly into the Welsh NHS supply chain and the remainder being supplied to councils, care homes, retailers and factories. The company has also received orders for the visors all over the globe and is now in talks to supply Japan and the US.
