Shipyards, prisons and other non-medical users seek Maine-made face masks

COURTESY / FLOWFOLD Flowfold, a niche manufacturer of travel and gear based in Gorham, is making personal protective equipment for health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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By Laurie Schreiber

The Manufacturers Association of Maine has been inundated in recent weeks with calls from around the country, seeking information about who's making protective face masks — but the callers aren't just hospitals and health care organizations.

Calls have come from the FBI, from a town in Georgia that wanted masks for its population of 2,000, from the New Hampshire National Guard, from the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, from the Vermont State Police and from Reporters Without Borders USA, among others, the association’s executive director, Lisa Martin, told Mainebiz.

Calls have also poured in from entities in Maine, including the island town of North Haven, she said.

“The entire country is looking toward Maine as being one place that has so much coordinated effort and responsiveness,” she said.

The calls started early this month when Steve Smith, CEO of L.L.Bean Inc., was on CNBC to talk about the Freeport-based retailer's efforts to produce face masks for health care workers, according to a news release.

L.L.Bean subsequently received calls from many companies outside of health care, looking for masks and other personal protective equipment. The retailer referred the non-medical callers to the Manufacturers Association of Maine and the Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership, said Martin.

“We’ve got 49 inquiries,” she said late last week. At the time, the requests were seeking a total of three-quarters of a million masks.

On the Saturday following Smith’s appearance, “my phone was blowing up, literally every two minutes, from people asking where to get masks and safety equipment,” she said.

In response, Martin and her team developed a COVID-19 resource center for non-health-care inquiries. The webpage appears on both the Manufacturers Association of Maine and the Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership websites and includes Maine companies manufacturing masks, gowns, face shields and aerosol boxes.

There’s also information on how to make DIY masks and more.

Martin responded to all of the calls personally. Early on, there were only two or three Maine companies making masks. That rapidly grew, she noted.

“In almost the same time frame, the surgeon general said that everyone going outside needs to have a mask on,” she added.

The Rhode Island Department of Corrections was looking for 8,000 to 10,000 masks for its inmates. A shipyard wanted masks for its employees. “What we’re doing in Maine has completely blown me away,” Martin said, citing collaboration among the University of Maine System, state agencies, health care systems and manufacturing associations to develop solutions to the shortages of supplies.

“Maine now has a substantial list of companies making PPE,” she said. “And it’s growing.”