Personal protection equipment (PPE) has become a major concern as COVID-19 continues to spread.
One local company is using their expertise in making PPE for miners to provide masks for the public and companies while also helping to support small and local businesses.
Alicia Woods, principal consultant at CG Aligned Consulting, said Covergalls, which makes coveralls and other PPE for women, is making fabric face masks for all to wear as an added precaution.
“We need to leave medical-grade PPE and N95 masks for front-line healthcare workers,” Woods said. “Because we are in the space of PPE we naturally were getting a lot of calls asking if we had access to these masks. I do, but the reality is the government needs those masks.”
They didn’t want to be another drag on demand for critical equipment, but they did think about the next line of essential workers. There are still a lot of people that have to be out in public and they also need some measure of protection, like grocery store staff, liquor stores, delivery and Canada Post, and mining operations staff while home.
The masks come in light of recommendations from Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Medical Officer of Canada, for people to cover their faces when in public to slow the spread of the virus and prevent people from touching their faces.
The masks, she said, are an outer shell of either 100 per cent cotton or polycotton blend, with an inner liner, adjustable aluminum nose piece and ear loops. The masks are washable in warm soap and water and hung to dry.
She stressed that while Covergalls can procure disposable masks and gowns, they are very expensive. This is a more cost-effective option for the general public as well as easing the demand for critical equipment for medical personnel.
The idea came to her when Covergalls needed to produce an order of safety-striped cargo pants. Often the company sends out smaller jobs like sewing on reflective tape to local seamstresses. The seamstress she went to had her business closed due to the pandemic.
It was then Woods thought about how to help keep small businesses open. She contacted the seamstress and she took on the job for the pants on her own.
She had two large rolls of material in stock and decided to drop them off at the seamstress’ house to make fabric masks.
“I felt that we could make these for anyone who wanted access so they could have them,” Woods said.
She made 50 masks from the material. After contacting friends and business connections in the community, all of them were quickly spoken for. Woods put in another order for 100 masks.
With increasing demand, she reached out to more local seamstresses who had little to no work, building a network to produce more masks. There are two in Sudbury, two in Timmins. Covergalls is supplying all the material.
“Without these masks, these ladies wouldn’t have employment,” Woods said.
The call for more also caught the attention of Indigenous fashion designer Lesley Hampton in Toronto, who also has connections to mining. Her team is now sewing masks to meet demand.
The Ontario Mining Association reached out to Woods asking what Covergalls was doing and her plans to produce more. They broached the idea of what if mining companies came together to launch a fundraising campaign to produce fabric masks and get them to individual mining employees.
“When those mining staff members go home, how do we protect their families, their communities?” Woods said. “When you think about it, a lot of the focus comes to be around the bigger cities. What about the smaller mining and Indigenous communities?”
Many mining operations are in remote locations, are near Indigenous communities and have staff located in those communities. There is a real concern they are bringing the virus back with them.
The idea from many of these companies is they give one to an employee, and more to give to their family members to protect everybody.
To meet this need, Covergalls reached out to their work wear line manufacturer in Toronto and addressed their concerns in the gap with the next line of essential workers.
“He has offered to flip his production to make fabric masks for us,” she said. “We now have access to manufacture up to 10,000 masks a week in Toronto, and if need be, 210,000 masks per week made offshore. We want to keep it made in Canada, but we have the capacity if the demand rises.”
Since the call for people to cover their faces, Woods said they have been working closely with mining companies to get masks to their personnel and their families. How they are pitching it is they have masks for individuals who need them to run errands, and companies who need bulk supply for personnel. The individual masks are for sale on the Covergalls website and are produced locally. Companies can take advantage of larger production orders at a reduced price per unit.
They also have three levels of supply: local, independent seamstresses, Toronto-based fashion designer and their regular manufacturer, and overseas.
In addition to making masks out of brand-new material, they are also taking existing products off the shelf and re-purposing them to make masks.
This is also a matter of being prepared for possible mandatory masks in public. Canada so far has not given that order, but Woods said other countries have, so the possibility is there.
In the near future, Woods said she will be reaching out to Prospectors and Developers of Canada (PDAC) and others to see about getting these masks distributed with mining companies across the nation. There are already a few mining companies that have expressed interest and are in conversation with them.
Depending on demand, this could become a permanent offering. They are already looking at how to redesign the masks to allow for a HEPA filter.