ACG starts new PPE plant

Members of Sweden’s ACG Group have rapidly responded to their country’s urgent need for PPE (protective personal equipment), by setting up and staffing a dedicated new nonwovens fabric converting and single-use garment making-up plant in just three weeks.

The new plant was established to convert and coat the fabric and turn it into fully finished protective overalls for hospital staff each month. It now employs 80 staff in a two-shift operationand has been such a success that a second immediate order has been secured from the Swedish authorities. This will push production up to a monthly 1.8 million square metres of converted fabric turned into 692,000 finished medical garments.

By the middle of March, as Covid-19 began to spread outside China, the immediate future was looking decidedly bleak for ACG Group, which has seven subsidiaries in total. Many activities were immediately cancelled with the imposition of an international travel ban and orders were also beginning to fall away on the domestic market.

“We were shocked by how fast things were moving and realised it would hit us hard if we didn’t react,” says Christian Moore, CEO of ACG Kinna, which spearheaded the new PPE initiative with sister company ACG Nyström – both members of TMAS, the Swedish textile machinery association.