Coronavirus: US factory stuck with 30 million N95 masks as China-made sell cheaper
- Florida-based DemeTech can’t find enough customers, less than a year after US hospitals were running short of supplies
- ‘We are considerably more expensive because we use US raw materials and US labour’
A Florida manufacturer that pounced on the N95 mask shortage at the start of the pandemic and retooled to churn them out now has 30 million of the coverings going begging.
DemeTech, a factory based in Miami, blames its woes on lower prices for Chinese-made N95s. Wholesale dealers say the problem is Americans are wary of new makers of the devices. A few dozen other US manufacturers are reportedly in similar straits.
This all began early last year when China, which produced half of all the N95 masks made around the world, was accused of hoarding them amid the initial scare over the coronavirus, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
In April US hospitals were running short of the masks and reported having just a three-day supply of N95s, said a poll by Premier, a company that supplies equipment to 4,100 hospitals and health care systems in America.
Google, Amazon and Facebook then banned ads for and sales of the masks on their platforms to prevent jittery people from buying up masks needed so desperately by front-line health care workers.
So DemeTech, a family-owned company that until then made suture thread, retooled its facilities to manufacture masks.