Montreal-area companies ramp up efforts to manufacture medical gowns - CTV News Montreal

MONTREAL -- While masks have been getting a lot of attention lately, the province of Quebec is also running out of protective medical gowns -- crucial to those who have to work at a hospital or testing site.

A group of companies in and around Montreal, though, is stepping in. While they may not be on the front lines, they’re mounting an industrial-scale effort to manufacture protective gear for thousands of people who are.

“We're ramping up right now,” said Karine Bibeau, vice president of Logistik Unicorp, a Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu company that typically makes uniforms, including medical gowns.

The company has turned its factory floor over to prioritize the gowns.

“We've already started production of Level 1 washable gowns. So we're looking at 200,000 now and we're already increasing,” she said. “It's a level of protection against fluids, so the isolation gowns, the protective gowns that we're talking about is about avoiding droplets of water.”

Coatmaker Canada Goose is ramping up efforts to pivot operations to make personal protective equipment (PPE) -- including gowns -- in its production facilities, including its factory in Montreal. The company said it can make some 60,000 gowns every week.

George Courey Inc. in Laval was already making medical gowns, even if that wasn’t its core business

“We're a 110-year-old family business and we supply hotels, hospitals with textile products like sheets towels, pillows blankets,” said company president Jeff Courey.

As the COVID-19 crisis got underway, the company found its stockpile of 100,000 gowns emptied virtually overnight.

The company can manufacture 500,000 reusable gowns every ten days; the challenge is making them resistant to droplets, even after repeated washing.

“I don't know what the next three months will hold,” said Courey. “The only thing I'm trying to make sure of right now is to make sure we're making as much PPE as we can.”

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