Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is spearheading India's humanitarian export thanks to integrating technology, raw material, 10k tailors and diverting newly acquired Alok Industries "fully" into PPE manufacturing for the world.
Reliance Industries has redeployed its newly acquired manufacturing facilities in Silvassa, Gujarat for exclusively manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPE) to safeguard India's doctors, nurses, medical staff and other frontline workers engaged in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
RIL re-engineered the plant and processes in quick time to enable manufacturing of PPE material and has deployed fresh technical tailoring resources of nearly 10,000 people for assembling the PPE suits.
Production started in mid-April and has been quickly ramped up to produce more than 1 lakh PPE per day now. This constitutes a significant proportion of India's daily PPE production.
India was importing most of its PPE requirement till manufacturing in India started ramping up from mid-April as a response to the national call for domestic manufacturing for COVID management.
Reliance has also been able to bring down the pricing of the PPE to nearly Rs 650 per PPE, a significant drop from the Rs 2,000 per piece that India was incurring earlier.
The availability of high quality and low cost PPEs from RIL are expected to significantly boost India's effectiveness in handling the COVID emergency.
The facility at Silvassa is manufacturing PPE coverall suits which are single piece zip-up suits and give complete protection. The coverall hems are covered with anti-microbial tape.
RIL is using high grade polypropylene to produce the equipment lending it more opacity while keeping it light weight. A PPE suit consists of coveralls, gloves, shoe covers, mask-three ply or N 95 (with our without respirator), head gear and face shield.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO), the protective equipment consists of garments placed to protect the health care workers or any other persons to get infected. These usually consist of standard precautions: gloves, mask, gown. If it is blood or airborne high infections it will include face protection, goggles and mask or faceshield, gloves, gown or coverall, head cover, rubber boots.
( With inputs from IANS )