JCB has joined the national effort to manufacture ventilators that will save the lives of Covid-19 patients.
The company poised to re-start production at a factory closed as a result of the Coronavirus crisis.
The construction and agricultural equipment manufacturer received a direct appeal from the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to help with the national shortage of ventilators needed to save lives of Covid-19 patients.
JCB chairman, Lord Bamford, promised to help in any way the company could and immediately mobilised a research and engineering team to examine potential ways to assist.
Restarting production
The company is ready to restart production at one of their factories and will be making special steel housing for a brand-new design of ventilator from Dyson. A minimum of 10,000 of the JCB housings will be manufactured as soon as Dyson receives regulatory approval for its design.
Bamford said: “When we were approached by the Prime Minister we were determined, as a British company, to help in any way we could. This project has gone from design to production in just a matter of days.”
“I am delighted that we have been to deploy the skills of our talented engineering, design and fabrication teams so quickly at a time of national crisis. This is also a global crisis, of course, and we will naturally help with the production of more housings if these ventilators are eventually required by other countries.”
This response to the global pandemic will see around 50 staff return to work that were previously affected by the extended company shutdown.
JCB suspended production at its nine UK production plants until at least the end of April as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. This shutdown affected the vast majority of its 6,500-workforce.
