Courtesy / U.S. Navy and Jim Cleveland
Alex Barbery, a chemical engineer at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, packages 3D-printed nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing.
May 20, 2020
Kittery shipyard, too, will produce coronavirus test swabs
By Staff
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is teaming up with the U.S. Army to make nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing, and plans to use 3D printing to turn out as many as 10,000 swabs a day.
The Kittery yard completed an agreement last week with a unit of the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command to produce the swabs, according to Portsmouth’s commander, Capt. Daniel Ettlich. Details of the agreement were not disclosed.
The swabs will be manufactured from surgical-grade resin according to standards approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, he said. Once sterilized, the swabs will become part of the testing kits used by the Department of Defense to detect the disease.
“Not only are we progressing on our mission of delivering submarine readiness to the fleet, but we are doing our part to enhance testing capabilities as part of the whole government COVID-19 response,” Ettlich said in an employee message later posted on Facebook.
The yard, which employs about 7,500 civilians, had previously begun developing 3D printing capabilities for the manufacture of submarine parts. Through the Naval Sea Systems Command, the Navy branch overseeing the yard, Portsmouth and the Army figured out how to use that capacity to make swabs.
“The entire Department of Defense community has really stepped up to assist with meeting the critical medical equipment shortages experienced during the COVID-19 crisis,” said Edward Brown, a project manager with the Army command, in a statement. “We are happy to partner with Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to help navigate the complex requirements and regulations needed to produce and distribute FDA-regulated medical products.”
Portsmouth’s switch to swabs comes after Guilford-based Puritan Medical Products earlier this month said it will double its production of the test component to nearly 40 million a month. As part of that ramp-up, Puritan will expand into a Pittsfield building owned by Cianbro Corp.
Puritan has contracted with another shipyard, Bath Iron Works, to produce machinery for the new facility.
While Portsmouth is one of four Navy-owned yards and focuses on submarine refitting and maintenance, BIW is known primarily for its construction of Navy destroyers and is owned by Reston, Va.-based General Dynamics Corp. (NYSE: GD).
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