As the Covid Pandemic began to sweep across Canada in late March, it was just an idea. By June 1, Molded Precision Components in a collaboration with J Sterling Industries of Concord, ON had already produced over 1M headbands for the Shield-U face shield that was designed, developed, tooled and is being manufactured right here in Simcoe County.
At day zero, it all started because MPC knew they had the team, the expertise, and the drive to make a difference in delivering PPE to the frontlines to fight COVID-19. Living their values of Integrity, Collaboration and Innovation, MPC pivoted their operation and resources to deliver a scalable tooling platform that will deliver over 27 Million PPE face shields to the Federal and Provincial government contracts by Fall, the first deliveries already having been made.
“We are extremely proud of what we have been able to achieve” commented David Yeaman, Co-Owner and President of Molded Precision Components. “Not only have we been able to maintain our workforce at full strength throughout the pandemic so far, we have more than doubled our staff to over 125 people and we have accelerated our pre-Covid plans for an extension to our facility, increasing the footprint to 45,000 sq/ft currently under construction as we speak.”
By the end of June, MPC and Sterling Industries will be producing over 450,000 PPE Shields per day and believe they have barely scratched the surface on the opportunities that exist. More important to the MPC team is leveraging this production capability that they have built to ensure that their community is being take care of too.
“So many people helped and continue to help us on this journey”, commented Yeaman. “When you start to understand how many of the families and extended families of our employees are working in front line roles, and how many people are contacting us looking for PPE face Shields so that they can get back to work to support their families, it is nothing short of mind-blowing.”
Now that mass production is ramping up, although Sterling and MPC are obligated to meet contractual government needs as the priority, the partners have invested in additional tooling to allow them to begin giving back to the community. Adding to donations already made as part of the development process, within 14 days MPC will be donating up to 25,000 Shield-U face shields within the local community; locations such as RVH and Soldiers Memorial Hospitals, local dental practices, first responders, long-term care homes, grocery store workers and many others.
“We started down this path to offer a long-term, Canadian-made solution that will endure the COVID pandemic and beyond. It has opened up a whole new perspective on the future” said Yeaman. “Shield-U has been designed to be a completely recyclable product and that outside of defined medical application can be reused, the visor being easily replaced in a matter of seconds. Delivering a #SustainablePPE solution both environmentally and from a business perspective were key considerations in our approach, but right now the priority has to be to get Shield-U into the hands of our local front-line workers to protect our extended #MPCFamily”