How are we going to harass with gloves and mask? That's impossible!". A week after the state of alarm was decreed and in the face of the pressing lack of sanitary protection material, that question ran through the facilities of the Lonia Textile Society, manufacturer of the Purificación García and Carolina Herrera brands, in Pereiro de Aguiar (Ourense). Their seamstresses, involved in artisan work, felt unable to put their hands on their sleeves and remain as skillful as ever. But there was no choice. The urgency was unforgiving. Nor the desire to help. The pandemic was spreading relentlessly, the hospitals had become saturated and their personnel were at the mercy of the covid-19 for lack of personal protective equipment, those PPE that have unfortunately become so familiar among the Spanish.
PHOTO GALLERY: Spread of solidarity in the Spanish industry
In Pereiro de Aguiar they went to work, they contacted the authorities to collect information on the most urgent needs. To respond to them as soon as possible, they held meetings with nearby hospitals, learned about the materials these centers had available to be able to manufacture the products in a hurry, prototyped, piloted and began cutting tissue, making patterns and producing masks and protective gowns for workers in intensive care units (ICU) without having the plant adapted. Speed was crucial.
"We started with slow manufacturing because we had to adjust production lines, train people and locate supplies, which was the most difficult thing of all," recalls one of the company's production managers. Then the machinery acquired a dizzying rhythm. “We started with 2 gowns, the next day we did 30, the next 60, and then we doubled up in one shift and with volunteer staff until we reached 600 gowns a day and some 3,000 masks. What we accomplished in just one week was incredible. ”
Sociedad Textil Lonia represents one of the growing examples of industrial companies that have reconverted their activity and have put their manufacturing capacity at the service of containing the coronavirus, whose weakest point has been the lack of personal protective equipment and the lack of respirators to care for the patients, who as the numbers of infections increased, became more pressing.
With the ICUs of the Madrid and Barcelona hospitals overflowing and unable to provide ventilators to all the patients who needed them, Seat decided to take the baton and contacted the Germans Trias and Clinic hospitals in Barcelona to industrialize the OxyGEN ventilators from the Protofy company. xyz, which had developed the prototype and was looking for industries to manufacture it. The automaker took up the challenge using parts from their cars to make the process go faster.
The respirator boxes arrived from Seat Barcelona, where the laser cutters adjusted the sheet metal and then mounted it at the Martorell factory. "We modified the chassis of the Seat León to make the automatic fan and took the wiper motor to drive the ventilation box," says Alicia Molina, responsible for engineering of dam processes and sheet metalwork for the brand, highlighting that in just two weeks and a half they managed to get the emergency respirator approved. "Record time," he stresses.
On the night of Saturday, April 4, after adapting the factory to its new activity and preparing 30 people to take it on a production shift, the first two vans with emergency ventilators left for hospitals in Madrid and Barcelona. Then the Martorell plant was idle, with 10,500 of Seat's 14,800 workers integrated into a temporary employment regulation (ERTE) file. Although more than 150 people participated in the project "day and night because we were very dedicated," says the engineer.
On April 10, the company suspended production on the grounds that "the ICU situation has improved as a result of the decrease in the number of positive covid-19 cases and hospitals do not need any more emergency respirators for now." He had made 600.
But that has not yet happened with personal protective equipment, which, although they begin to reach hospitals, health centers and nursing homes more regularly than a few weeks ago, have many companies embarked on their preparation because the need continues . And also, as they explain in Textil Lonia, "more and more requests come to us from hospitals, nursing homes and even companies, who have found out that we are doing them, they ask us for them and it is frustrating not to be able to supply" .
The Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) knows this. "We appreciate all the collaboration initiatives of non-health companies that are helping to supply the population with the products necessary to cope with covid-19," says the agency under the Ministry of Health, which adds that the needs are highly determined. for the situation at all times. Now it is somewhat less that of respirators; however, that of masks or gels will continue to be vital during the de-escalation stage of the alarm state.
The Agency explains that it has received collaboration initiatives from companies in all sectors, projects that are also carried out from the autonomous communities and from the companies themselves. In the last two weeks, indicated on April 22, 53 licenses for the temporary manufacture of masks and surgical gowns had been applied for, of which a dozen had been authorized through an exceptional procedure arbitrated to expedite processing in the event of a health emergency, such as the production of ventilator-ventilators to seven companies and the production of gels and hydroalcoholic solutions to nine.
The factory of the multinational L'Oréal in Burgos is one of them. In the middle of the month of March he received the permit and began the task of reconverting his formulas to elaborate hydroalcoholic gels and start up the supply. "At the beginning we did not have bottles for these gels, so we decided to use the ones we used for other products," says Benoît Mocquant, director of the plant. They then bought them and expanded the formats of their hygiene solutions, from individual containers to bulk cans. "This way we can respond to all needs," he stresses. First they arrived at nearby hospitals and nursing homes and later they implemented a more structured organization, with direct and indirect delivery, also for the State Security forces.
Mass manufacturing started on March 20, with 50 people actively participating and proud of their new solidarity function. They dedicated 3 production lines that later were 7 of the factory's 44 total. Since then, 183,700 liters of disinfecting gels have been produced and 753,000 cans have been packed at a rate of 30,000 units per day.
After the obligatory stoppage of Holy Week, the Burgos factory in L'Oréal began to return to normality, if the current situation of the industry can be called that way, with more than reduced activity as a result of the coronavirus. Hydroalcoholic gels continue to be manufactured there relentlessly, while boosting production lines for shampoos and other personal hygiene products.
L'Oréal will continue to make these liquids until specialized manufacturers can prepare enough to supply the market. Mocquant estimates that they will do so until at least June.
Outside of specialized factories, face protection screens are probably the product that is being produced the most at the initiative of companies. And this is thanks to 3D printing, present in a multitude of companies, whatever activity they have. Cruzcampo was one of the first to manufacture them night and day seven days a week after the state of alarm was decreed. After verifying with the health authorities that, among the existing supply shortages, it was the protection article that they could deliver the fastest, the brewery looked for pre-existing models to speed up the process. He used the weekend to find them and be able to print the masks from Monday itself.
"We make more than 100 screens daily and we have already delivered more than 2,000", explains Juan Padilla, responsible for digitization and automation at the Seville factory in Cruzcampo. The factory staff has volunteered to help with the task, so that the machines are fully operational. "People are very pleased to be able to do their bit to stop the pandemic," says the director of the factory, Juan Candau.
With the production of beer at 50%, since the sale for hotels and restaurants has been paralyzed with the closure of the establishments, and without having undertaken an ERTE to date, half of the 200 people who work in Seville have participated in the project. "We will produce until there is no demand or until we run out of materials," Padilla continues. Like most companies, it consumes these consumables itself.
16 kilometers away from Cruzcampo, Airbus facilities are also working on something that has nothing to do with the manufacture of aeronautical components. The multinational is tirelessly using the 30 3D printers that are distributed among its facilities in Seville, Cádiz, Madrid and Toledo to produce protection screens for healthcare personnel. The Illescas factory is the one that concentrates most of the efforts.
Teresa Busto, its director, says that it was the employees themselves who gave the idea of collaborating altruistically with health professionals, in view of the lack of equipment in nearby hospitals. “We had plastics and printers and, given the urgency, we started to make robes and visors, first for a couple of hospitals, and now we can't keep up. They have been requested by the health centers and hospitals of Getafe, Móstoles, La Paz, Gregorio Marañón or Gómez Ulla in Madrid; in Ocaña, Puebla de Montalbán, Talavera de la Reina… ”, explains the also vice president of Airbus in Spain.
Although the mission was not easy. "Until a week after designing the prototypes and testing them, we did not get them right," he continues. And it was when the recoverable paid permit was decreed for the factories (during Easter) when they started to produce two shifts with volunteer personnel. About 50 people from the thousand who come to these facilities every morning. Despite the fact that many more raised their hands to help, "there were queues of volunteers to come on their vacations and some even got angry for not being able to do so," admits Teresa Busto.
They took their resistant plastics and began to make patterns and cut them with gigantic machines that usually divide carbon fiber pieces with which planes are made. And to join the parts with other sealing devices prepared for the same use.
Until the closing of this report, 12,200 protective gowns for health personnel had been made at the Toledo plant. And among all the Airbus factories participating in the project they delivered 300 masks per day. At that time, the director of Airbus Illescas was beginning to re-plan the production of aeronautical components so that the 11 3D printers of the factory worked on medical equipment on weekends and the protective gowns only required one or two of its cutting machines. carbon fiber. It was necessary to return to the routine without abandoning its contribution to combat covid-19.
However, in Pereiro de Aguiar they still cannot return to normal. Carolina Herrera and Purificación García stores remain closed. And more than 500 of the 730 workers at Textil Lonia live an ERTE. The hundred employees who collaborate in the solidarity project are looking for improvements in the comfort of their special ICU gowns, which can be reused after being sterilized due to the resistance of the material with which they are manufactured, and the seamstresses are waiting for them to leave their machines without a thread more than the precise ones. After all, the doctors show off their protections signed by Carolina Herrera.
There they have set up multipurpose teams that, depending on the fabrics and fibers that come from the hospitals, are dedicated to making masks, gowns or, recently, pajamas for toilets. The latter is “a product that requires resistance and durability, which is precisely where we add value. If it endures six or eight washes instead of four it is quite a triumph ”, they maintain in the company. At the moment, they have material to make about 10,000 pajamas.
"The needs are scary", say the production managers of Sociedad Textil Lonia, "they call us from different autonomous communities and the question is how many thousands of gowns can we make next week". They do not know how long they will continue with their altered production lines to do this work. "There is a change in supply, the offer of personal protective equipment is more abundant, but people do not want to face the terror of lack of supply," they explain. Because the demand is still alive and because they need masks for their own employees, the textile company is evaluating whether it is going to produce masks, gowns and pajamas as an industrial activity, this time charging, and given the tightness it faces and is going to continue facing fashion in these times of crisis caused by confinement.
The Ministry of Health considers the activity of all these factories and the rest of those that are jointly and severally participating in the fight against the pandemic as "an indispensable tool to face national health needs, as well as a stimulus for the industry." Thus, important projects for the national manufacture of medical devices, whose supply previously depended heavily on the elaboration of third countries, are taking place, they point out.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the number of voices increases, even within the Government itself, that criticize this dependency from abroad and bet that Spanish companies are in charge of producing more sanitary material, from medicines to protective equipment, so that the following Pandemic does not catch us from behind, with homework to do.
Meanwhile, the Spanish companies that have converted their factories to combat covid-19 and persevere in their role of supporting society, those that do not want to know (even if they know) about the money they have invested with their emergency response, In addition to being proud of their human teams and their action, they believe that they have also won. Not only because they have demonstrated their ability to adapt to circumstances, as Benoît Mocquant highlights, but also because their staff have joined together more than ever and feel more connected to the company. "These projects unite the employees a lot, it is appreciated in collaboration and teamwork," says Juan Candau. Perhaps the engagement also spreads like the coronavirus after the pandemic. — eps
Historical comparisons
David Cano
From an economic perspective, the current debacle resembles the Great Depression of almost a century ago, while there are different elements from the great global financial crisis of 2008. The challenge is to avoid structural damage so that the day the virus ends , the recovery is as fast as possible.
Immersed in a new economic recession, it is logical that we want to make comparisons with the previous ones. Due to the foreseeable magnitude and global impact of this that has just begun, the two historical references are the great global financial crisis (2008-2012) and the Great Depression (1929-1934). In these two, their common feature is that it took too long to recognize that we were in the midst or about to enter a recession. This meant that the necessary measures were not taken on time and, when it was done, they were incorrect or contrary to what was recommended.
In discharge from the authorities of almost a century ago, we must recognize that then the capacity to analyze the situation was much more limited. Knowledge of how the economy worked was markedly less (the first Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 1969). Furthermore, tools such as fiscal policy (taxes and public spending) or monetary policy (central banks) had not been sufficiently developed. A Great Depression was suffered because it was not known how to diagnose correctly, because the initial decisions were wrong and because there were not enough tools to mitigate the damage.
The last great crisis was characterized by its extreme complexity. I know that we fall into the so-called retrospective bias and that the reasons for that recession now seem obvious and known to us, but this is not the case. It all started in 2006 with the slowdown in the US property market. Then, in the summer of 2007, he moved to what seemed like only a liquidity problem in financial institutions. It was not until a year later that solvency weaknesses began to reveal themselves in one of the central pillars of the world economy: the credit system. Much has been published about those moments, which had the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as its climax, so I will not insist. I do recommend reading Firefighting, the book written by three of the main protagonists of that crisis: Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner —the “firefighters”, as they called themselves (you can read my review here). In this work they admit that they never knew exactly what they had to do or what the results of the measures would be. They found the problems and had to solve them as soon as possible, with the feeling of going behind, that the "traditional manual" did not work and that there were many limitations to overcome, starting with understanding what the problem was. It was a trial and error strategy in a crisis in which the absence of historical experience caused criticism to emerge from all sides. On the one hand, the apocalyptic economists had an ideal framework for their catastrophic prophecies. On the other was public opinion, to which it was necessary to explain who was really being rescued: not the shareholders of the banks, but the citizens. They had a double challenge: doing things well and getting them understood and accepted.
But between two and three years later, the euro area and especially the so-called "peripheral countries" had to endure a replica of the initial crisis, this time in the form of a risk of the common currency breaking. The financial crisis had triggered an economic recession that led to a public debt crisis, which added a dose of complexity. I remember those moments with anguish. Now we realize that the gravity of that situation served to create the tools that we already use in this (there is no harm that does not come for good).
During the current recession, GDP falls of up to 10% are expected. That is, the same thing that corrected the GDP of Spain between 2009 and 2012. Then the contraction occurred in four years (in Greece it was 30%), whereas now it will be in just six months. That is why I insist that this recession will be harsher (of course, without taking into account the human drama of the thousands of victims), but it will not be as complex as the last one, and this is very relevant data. From an economic perspective, the current crisis is very similar to that of almost a century ago, although this time the diagnosis has been made in real time and there is consensus on the causes and potential development. It is an economic crisis caused by a factor that must be circumstantial and, therefore, if it is controlled, so will the fall in GDP. The challenge is to avoid structural damage to the economy so that the day the virus ends, the recovery is as fast as possible. That challenge is to avoid defaults in companies and families. And if the consensus in the diagnosis has been a key factor, it has been more so that forceful measures have been taken quickly, especially on the monetary front. Thus, central banks have reacted by creating a huge amount of money (of the order of five trillion euros) that will reach companies and families via banks, states and financial markets.
This is the big difference compared to the 2008-2012 situation. So there was no flow of credit or money. Banks were the problem, and several states and large companies had no ability to finance themselves. There were many of us who demanded that the central banks take measures, but either they lacked legal protection, they had not developed the tools, or there were even opinions to the contrary (alleging a “moral hazard”). This is not the case now. The great global financial crisis served for central banks to develop over a five-year period the so-called unconventional monetary policy. In less than a fortnight they have redeployed it, with an intensity and scope far superior to then. Now banks are not only not the problem, they are part of the solution to channel the money that central banks are creating. Its "firepower" (thanks to its high commercial capillarity) must focus on SMEs and families, which are very needy indeed. Medium-sized companies and, above all, large companies must continue to resort to the capital market, which must not only not decrease, but grow in these circumstances. Now the then famous "risk premiums" have not skyrocketed. The National Treasures have no difficulty issuing public debt since the ECB can buy all the bonds they issue. These differences from 2008-2012 may seem very technical, but believe me, they are very important. —EPS
David Cano is a partner at the Afi consultancy.