I wonder if these jobs in Nanaimo will be affected...
Nanaimo’s Harmac mill works to fill doubled pulp order for medical masks and gowns
Mar. 24, 2020
Production is heating up at Harmac Pacific to produce a special paper pulp used in the manufacture of disposable surgical masks, gowns and other medical products.
Those products, worn to help prevent the spread of disease, are in short supply due to the COVID-19 crisis and the U.S. customer that produces them has doubled its order for the K10S pulp.
“It’s a customer out of the States and we’ve been supplying them for years, but in light of what’s going on in the lack of medical supplies, they’ve doubled their order with us in the last week, so we’re doing everything we can to meet that demand,” said Levi Sampson, Harmac president.
Sampson said the Harmac mill is the world’s only producer of the particular grade of paper pulp used in the manufacture of surgical masks and gowns and that the mill has been producing it since before he came to work there in 2008.
“K10S is the pulp that we’re producing for these medical supplies. We’re the only one that produces it,” he said. “Different pulp mills run different grades of pulp – almost kind of like recipes.”
K10S pulp is made from western red cedar that produces a soft fibre that makes it suitable for the final products made from it.
“It’s been tweaked over the years to come up with the right formula that allows it to go into the medical supplies,” Sampson said.
https://www.vicnews.com/business/na...ubled-pulp-order-for-medical-masks-and-gowns/