Health

Closed Franklin factory may soon produce PPE gowns for first responders, hospitals

FRANKLIN, Mass. — For more than a century, the Clark Cutler McDermott factory stood near the center of Franklin where it most recently produced automobile upholstery for General Motors.

In 2016, the Clark Cutler McDermott Company declared bankruptcy and the factory closed forever.

But now, four years later, there is a glimmer of life for one of the closed factory’s machines.

It turns out a disconnected, decades-old die cutter machine that once produced automobile parts, might be converted into creating lifesaving PPE gowns for hospitals and first responders.

“Once this is up and running, they think they can produce 100,000 (PPE gowns) in a week,” Franklin Town Council Chair Thomas Mercer told Bob Ward.

The initial idea for the die cutter machine came from a former Clark Cutler McDermott engineer, now living in Michigan who remembered the machine and its capabilities.

Two weeks ago, the former engineer reached out to Mercer with an idea to possibly convert the die cutter so it could produce PPE gowns.

“They hope to be able to help the country build back up the stockpile of PPE that we now know is extremely necessary to have,” Mercer told Ward.

Within days, a material supplier was found in Rhode Island, and efforts are now underway to find a stitchery.

At the State House, Franklin State Representative Jeffrey Roy chairs the House Manufacturing Caucus and he started making the connections needed to quickly move this project forward.

Soon, the former CCM engineer and his business partner found themselves in Franklin with Mercer and Roy, seeing for themselves, the machine that could help produce the PPE gowns.

All of this is coming together in not years or months, but a matter of days.

“Massachusetts is poised to be the number one state for manufacturing in the entire United States and it is incidents like this, that’s really a true testament to what we can do,” Roy said.

“Everyone we have reached out to on this project has been supportive. They have said, 'What do I need to do to get this moving?’ And that is such an encouraging thing to see and witness in a time like this,” Roy said.

The project still has minor hurdles ahead, but both Roy and Mercer tell me, within a week, it is possible an old die cutter machine and a long-dormant Franklin factory could be back in operation within a week.

The first PPE gowns will likely go to Milford Regional Hospital where Rep. Roy recently delivered rain ponchos to staff to help alleviate a severe PPE gown shortage there.

From there, local hospitals and first responders across Massachusetts and Rhode Island could receive a major boost.

“I feel really good, in the next week to ten days, they’ll be producing PPE for our first responders, for our hospitals, for the entire medical community,” Mercer said.

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RESOURCES:

- Massachusetts Coronavirus Information

- Boston Coronavirus Information

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