Hastings Manufacturers Adapt To Pandemic Needs
Interface Manufacturing, a company based at Churchfields Industrial Estate, is making healthcare equipment and supplies for use in the treatment of Covid-19 patients. It is also supplying scientific equipment and test kits for investigating the disease, including electron beam microscopes and mass spectrometers.
A subsidiary, Interface Precision Engineering, is working with a range of customers in the ‘nano imagery’ sector: the components manufactured are key parts of the imaging machines used in the search for a Covid-19 vaccine. It also manufactures critical components for ventilators.
So does Technoturn, another company based at Churchfields, which reports the supply of 96,000 ventilator components on a fully automated machine running 24/7 within days of getting the business.
Marshall-Tufflex, based at Castleham industrial estate, has been working “round the clock” to deliver specialised antimicrobial cable trunking for six new emergency Nightingale Hospitals, set up for the NHS’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak.
It’s not all high tech engineering. BD Foods, also based at Castleham, which normally provides aeroplane meals, has shifted its catering business into providing a stock of soups and sauces to local organisations including the Hastings Community Hub and Dom’s Food Mission. Regional wholesalers are also being supplied with pasta sauces and soup concentrates that go into care packs for the vulnerable sector, distributed by local councils around the country to those that cannot get access to food.
Hastings Borough Council’s leader Kim Forward said: “We rightly applaud our many frontline and key workers who are battling Covid-19, and those supporting the community. We are proud, too, of those carrying on other vital work in the fight. It is really heartening that so much is being done by so many local people in other ways.
“Three of these four local businesses work from premises owned and managed by Hastings Borough Council. I am pleased that we are able to play our own small part in this massive operation.”
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