Honeywell, Premier to Bolster U.S. Production of Medical Gloves
Honeywell and hospital supply-purchasing group Premier Inc. will launch a venture to manufacture 750 million nitrile exam gloves in the U.S. each year, the companies told Bloomberg Law.
It is the latest effort to shore up problems in the medical supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE), which gained widespread attention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nitrile gloves, used for nonsurgical purposes in hospitals, and other medical gloves have been in short supply since the beginning of the pandemic and are among of the main types of PPE that health workers still struggle to get.
The partnership with Honeywell was spurred on by one goal, Alkire said: “Never again will we be put into a scenario like that again where we have an overdependence on either one country like China, or we have an overdependence on a region of the world.”
Manufacturing gloves is complex, and Alkire said Honeywell was the right partner because it has the “manufacturing wherewithal” to have a “strong influence on that entire supply chain” for gloves.
