Surrey Makes PPE: Local manufacturers retooling to combat COVID-19

Surrey Makes PPE is a City of Surrey initiative connecting local manufacturers with the information and resources to retool their facilities to produce essential medical and protective equipment. To date, nine Surrey manufacturers are producing PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and medical supplies to meet the growing demand. The nine companies have the capacity of producing up to 32,000 face shields, 40,000 reusable fabric face masks and upwards of 200,000 liters of hand sanitizer each month.

“Surrey is home to one of the largest manufacturing bases in the province and I want to commend our businesses for pivoting so quickly to produce critical medical and protective supplies needed to fight COVID-19,” said Mayor Doug McCallum. “The ability to turn on a dime and produce PPE supplies shows the initiative and the nimbleness of Surrey companies to adapt during these challenging times.”

Surrey Makes PPE was launched to assist senior levels of government and health authorities access large quantities of PPE supplies. An additional 11 facilities are in the process of retooling their assembly lines to respond and support the growing demands of government and health authorities. The program also provides an online marketplace that allows buyers to source in bulk from manufacturers directly.

Surrey’s Firetech Manufacturing is one of the nine companies that has already repurposed their production lines to produce face shields.

“Firetech Manufacturing’s core business is building custom bags and backpacks for first-responders,” said Dan London, President of Firetech. “When the federal government sounded the call for PPE, we naturally decided to pivot part of our production to build disposable face shields, for most of which is being purchased by the local health authorities.  We are expanding our capacity with an additional shift in the next couple weeks to meet growing demand. Surrey Makes PPE is a great initiative to help us bring these Surrey-made products to more Canadian health authorities and grow awareness of local efforts to be part of the national fight against COVID-19.”  

For more information on Surrey Makes PPE, visit www.SurreyMakesPPE.ca.

For a video tour of Firetech Manufacturing, click here.