By Scott McLean and Jo Shelley, CNN
Seen from the sky, the former open-air Caterpillar factory in Chicago stretches across two dozen football fields. Gloves.
The U. S. Medical Glove Company, or USMGC, needs to make a profit, but so does U. S. dependence on imports of medical gloves from the Far East, especially from China and Thailand, while creating jobs in the U. S. USA They pay well beyond the minimum wage.
It’s one of many U. S. corporations with the same mission: to make America more self-sufficient in medical devices after the coronavirus pandemic triggered a global avalanche, especially for non-public protective devices or PPE.
Inside the USMGC facility, CEO Dylan Ratigan tours the “bays” of the length of an airplane hangar in a golf cart, to slightly engage his enthusiasm or confidence in the company he is building. The former C host has ambitions to produce 10 billion gloves consistent with the year, or nearly 3% of the world’s production capacity of pre-pandemic medical gloves.
Ratigan felt compelled to act after seeing the U. S. desperately rely on Asian PPE manufacturers at the height of the pandemic, he told CNN. Amid the unprecedented demand, there have been cases of predatory pricing, fraud, and scams. gloves have even been imported into the United States through tens of millions, according to a CNN investigation.
“I think bad resolutions have been made in U. S. manufacturing. “In the U. S. , especially for critical assets like (medical gloves),” Ratigan said. “The resolution was made to make sure this never happens again. “
During CNN’s December at the USMGC plant, a new production line “soaked” its first nitrile gloves, a check to make sure the machines are running and nitrile’s complex chemistry is perfect. in the United States, Ratigan said.
USMGC has a $63. 6 million advance purchase order with the U. S. government. In the U. S. , the company announced in June. In total, the U. S. governmentUSA It has contracts worth approximately $700 million to invest in 11 U. S. corporations. USA The United States, the equivalent of about five percent of global pre-pandemic glove production, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, told CNN in a statement.
The pandemic has “how dependent the United States is on foreign sources, which is a vulnerability in public fitness emergencies,” the HHS spokesperson said.
By 2020, 90% of gloves, syringes, and needles used in the U. S. USA They came here only from Asia, according to HHS. Now, Washington plans to spend $1. 7 billion to bring domestic PPE production to life, a component of the $4. 5 billion to help expand production. in the United States, according to HHS. The United States is also investing in the domestic production of raw fabrics for gloves, masks, gowns, medicines, vaccines, medical control kits and other essential medical supplies.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, there was only one company generating single-use nitrile gloves in the United States, that manufacturer told CNN. SHOWA Group, a Japanese company, had about 125 workers at a factory in Fayette, Alabama, generating about $400 million. Production lines were old and higher internal prices made a box of gloves twice as expensive as Asian brands, the company told CNN.
ShowA Americas’ chief marketing officer has tried to convince buyers to diversify their suppliers by buying at least U. S. -made gloves, he said: It’s a tough sell.
“We were caught in the frustrating game of being a domestic manufacturer, but our own country would possibly not buy our products,” LeVerne said.
Pre-pandemic plans to modernize and expand the plant accelerated thanks to a strong higher order and a loan from the U. S. government. USA Within about 3 years, the company plans to produce more than six times its current U. S. production. “In the U. S. , he said.
Meanwhile, a father-son start-up, US Glove Supply, is two months away from the machinery commissioning at its new plant in Buffalo, New York, the company told CNN, which has no government orders or investments.
Neither does USA Gloves, a Houston suburban startup created through former importers of promotional products. CEO Zishan Momin and his partners began building their factory a year ago after locating it to get gloves from abroad, he said.
Having no pleasure in manufacturing, they have turned to foreign experts in the production of gloves, which will start production lines next month. They expect them to be a little more expensive than Asian brands.
“Hospitals and clinics, and even end users, are willing to pay this little Array premium. . . so that we are in a position for a long-term pandemic,” Momin told CNN.
Malaysia produces the highest percentage of medical gloves in the world, followed by Thailand and China, according to the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association. U. S. manufacturers are almost more unlikely to compete with Asian factories on prices, but imports come at another cost.
U. S. Customs and Border ProtectionUSA It suspended imports from the world’s largest medical glove manufacturer, Top Glove, Malaysia, this year over forced labor tariffs. Only recently did imports resume after the company paid millions of back wages to rectify the agency’s concerns.
Ratigan insists he can compete on costs while adhering to U. S. law. USA And it manages ethically.
“The explanation for why I can do it is because the generation has done it to me in a way that allows me to compete with even the dirtiest slave who works hard,” he said.
The key, Ratigan said, is a virtually fully automated process: a giant device provided with thousands of manual molds is immersed in a chemical aggregate to the exact heat and then the resulting gloves at the right time.
“You may have never done this 30 years ago because the generation didn’t exist,” he said.
By pointing to his production line, Ratigan emits what he calls “an undeniable contraption,” short for just about anything that can be manufactured in the U. S. USA Through a well-paid workforce.
“There are a lot of those devices that are made here and can be manufactured here in a way that gives a minimum wage of $50,000 a year, full benefits. . . no forced labor, no abuses while creating successful businesses,” he said.
The USMGC minimum wage is $25 an hour, plus health care policy and, and there are plans to provide child care on-site, Ratigan said.
“If you treat other people as valuable, you make money,” he said.
The pandemic has shown that over-reliance on the U. S. USA In Asia for medical materials is “very high risk,” said Prashant Yadav, a fitness chain specializing at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
The Good Luck of U. S. Glove ManufacturersUU. Se based on its ability to automate and its flexibility to increase or minimize on-demand production, he told CNN.
It also depends on how long buyers don’t forget the desperate race to a secure PPE, Yadav said, “Or is it just a very short-term memory, and soon other people will start thinking about ‘who is my cheapest supplier?””
In the long run, the U. S. government has been able to USA It deserves to help domestic PPE manufacturers by negotiating industrial agreements that guarantee comparable wages in Asian factories, which subsidize U. S. companies, he said.
“Once the largest number of suppliers exporting to the United States raise their standards, whether in terms of quality and ethics, everyone in the market is forced to raise their standards,” he said.
Momin and Ratigan agree.
“The U. S. government will have to be brave and step up and at the very least institute mandatory price lists to punish those who use slaves who produce counterfeit items, add medical gloves, and allow American competitors, like us, to compete. “at one point on the playing field,” Ratigan said.
But once your plant and others are up and running, the U. S. USA It will be equally vulnerable in terms of the source of PPE, as long as the next pandemic breaks out.
The-CNN-Wire ™
Tim Lister, Florence Davey-Attlee, Darren Bull, Luke Wolagiewicz, Gary Levens, Dougla Burns, Nick Young and David Lynch contributed to this story.
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