The requirement:
Med-Con, located in regional Victoria, received a requirement from the Australian Federal Government in early 2020 to increase the Medical Masks manufacturing capacity from 2 million to 67 million masks.
This required support from the Australian defence force to modernise the existing machines and design new machines capable of this capacity.
This then created an urgent demand in volume for specific surgical mask fabric.
We were requested to provide a cost efficient and more responsive service to procure, manufacture, import and deliver the medical fabric required to produce these medical masks to the plant in regional Victoria.
The challenge:
Globally, disposal medical masks were one of the hardest items to source in early 2020. Governments and industry were purchasing all available vital fabric and materials then stockpiling this material to release by way of controlled allocation to factories to manufacture masks only within their respective countries.
Because Industry and Governments globally during this time were not allowing exports as they amassed stock internally, there was a major challenge negotiate the purchase of the fabric at a fair price.
We also needed to ensure the fabric complied with Australian standards and TGA requirements.
Once the fabric was secured, it needed to transported and produced into the woven green fabric aligned to Med- Cons specifications ready to be exported.
A key challenge was then locking in already full capacity production of woven green fabric to be merged with their own full schedule. This was followed by clearing customs in the country of export and further clearing customs in Australian ports as time efficiently as possible.
SOLUTION:
We used our extensive 32 years of global connections and strong relationships with industry and governments to assist and reach out with a supplied brief to identify countries which had the fabric as a matter of urgency.
Once we had identified these sources, we used our government connections in those regions to request a release of the quality we required. This was met with resistance, therefore under approval from Med-Con we summited documents to the respective countries Government officials detailing this fabric was only for a medical mask factory in Australia. It was an urgent requirement to produce local masks for the COVID-19 pandemic, and only to be distributed in Australia. This approach demonstrated our urgent attention and assisted in allowing us to negotiate both the cost, and importantly, the release of the fabric.
We ensured full specifications and samples were provided to Med-Con. This included analysis reports/testing/ samples, all to be approved by Med- Con prior to production.
Due to shear volume, we worked on current shipping times, loading, trucking times to port, port loading, and vessel sailing times to inform our logistical approach. A decision was made based on our detailed analysis to ship via 40-foot-high cubic containers that were to be staggered on different vessels to mitigate risk, including logistics to unload at Med Con.
Efficiency was also demonstrated as due to the light weight of the fabric rolls, we maximised the full space of the 40-foot shipping containers by eliminating pallets and designing a detailed loading drawing to save on cost.
CONCLUSION:
✔ We negotiated the full volume purchase of fabrics to fulfil our contract for immediate release for production.
✔ We produced the woven green fabric to Australian standards and loaded into 40-foot-high cubic shipping containers in a time efficient manner.
✔ We completed detailed international 3rd party testing and export documentation.
✔ We cleared customs for export and shipped on vessels with a direct route to Australia.
✔ We precleared the containers well in advance before arriving at the port of Melbourne.
✔ We delivered to Med- Con the first 40 foot in 28 days.
✔ Med -Con produced medical masks for Australia on schedule.
