Nissan’s Sunderland plant is being used to scale up delivery of protective equipment to UK health workers, delivering up to 100,000 face visors a week.
The visors are being assembled at the plant using parts made by volunteers across the country with 3D printers.
The various parts are sent to Nissan Sunderland, where a team of volunteers have created a parts processing line to sets of 125 for shipping direct to the UK’s National Health Service. This format, requested by the NHS, minimises damage risk during transit and ensures the maximum volume can be dispatched at once.
More than 77,000 visors will leave the plant by the end of this week, with up to 100,000 being distributed each week, from next week.
The project was inspired by four brothers, two of whom, Anthony and Chris Grilli, are engineers based at Nissan’s Technical Centre in Cranfield, Bedfordshire. Production was initially kicked off with the support of crowd funding and used banks of 3D printers at the brothers’ homes.
Since then, Nissan has provided funds for an injection moulding tool that increases the number of parts produced, which are now being sourced from companies in Lancashire, Coventry and Gateshead.
Adam Pennick, Nissan’s production director, said: “It’s great to be able to play our part in helping to provide the NHS with these visors. Our people are experts in the logistics behind an effective supply chain, and we certainly weren’t short of volunteers for this project.”
