Half a million protective aprons made at Nissan's Sunderland plant for frontline workers
After producing half a million protective aprons for front line health care workers, Nissan Sunderland has announced it is handing over the project reins to HMP Northumberland.
A team of 57 staff volunteers at the plant have manufactured the aprons in just under three months.
They have been supplied to more than 100 health care trusts and care homes across the North East.
Alan Johnson, Vice President of Manufacturing said: “I’m extremely proud of the way the team at the plant answered the call to produce PPE for our front line workers.
With both production lines now back up and running at the plant, the team have donated the equipment to a group of staff and 15 residents at the prison, based in Acklington, Northumberland.
The prison team hope to initially produce 40,000 aprons each week.
Nissan began producing aprons in April following a request from the Royal College of Nursing and Unite for UK manufacturers to help with the unprecedented demand for PPE.
Samantha Pariser, Director at HMP Northumberland said: “Both HMP Northumberland and Sodexo Justice are delighted to be taking over this project from Nissan.
The project was carried out in parallel to the plant’s activity to help supply visors to the NHS.
As part of that, a team of volunteers have created a parts processing line to sort thousands of individual visor parts and pack them into sets of 125 for shipping direct to the NHS, with more than 370,000 units distributed.