As the Covid19 pandemic has hit every nation, the UK government has been taking steps to increase the National Health Service’s ability to respond to the growing infection rate and in particular to increase its critical-care ventilator capacity.
As part of this, Rolls Royce were tasked by the Cabinet Office to dramatically ramp-up production of the Smiths Medical paraPAC ventilator. In turn, Rolls Royce immediately reached out to Silflex and Samco for supply chain support.
In response, our production sites within the UK have gone, overnight, from making a small number of ventilator hoses throughout the year to producing 8,000 units in under two weeks.
Across the businesses we had to take a number of steps to ensure we could hit the demands set by the UK Government. This included our in-house fabrication room producing 36 four-way multicavity tools in less than a week, with each of the 8000 hoses then being hand built, cut to size and inspected to ensure they were of the absolute highest quality and standards for their intended vital lifesaving needs.
Managing Director Andrew Lloyd said:
“I’m immensely proud that Silflex and Samco have been able to support the UK government with the extra production of these parts for the paraPac ventilators which will play such a vital part in the fight back against the virus. Across our Currie & Warner Group we are also proud to be making thousands of Oxygen regulator components for the NHS.
I would like to personally thank my group of staff at all levels across all our sites who have truly gone above and beyond to produce these parts. They’ve worked daily overtime and weekends, they’ve skipped breaks and greatly increased output to ensure that we could hit the numbers needed. They’ve done this against a background where everyone is also personally worried about their own health, families and loved ones. Their work is directly going to save lives and they should be very proud of their efforts.”
