Taiwan textile industry has accumulated experience and technology that allows Taiwan government to form a national epidemic prevention team in the fight against COVID-19 at such short notice. Several Taiwanese textile companies have been modifying their production lines and ramping up output to help meet the rising demand for surgical masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
y integrating upstream, midstream, and downstream textile industries and with the help of textile manufacturers such as Asiatic Fiber, Chia Her, China Surgical Dressings Center, Everest, Formosa Plastic Group, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, Far Eastern New Century, Kang Na Hsiung and Singtex etc., a complete surgical mask and other PPE supply chain was formed. Taiwan has transformed from importing country for surgical mask to the second-largest surgical mask producer worldwide with daily production capacity of 15 million units!
Through the efforts by manufacturers like Eclat, Makalot, Nan Liu and WEB-PRO on the “National Team for Hazmat and Protective Clothing”, Taiwan successfully develops and produced the level 3 protective suit in just one month. In the period from March to April, over one million units of isolation gowns and 100 thousand units of protective suits were manufactured.
The team of those manufacturers has been contracted by the government to deliver 1.1 million isolation and protective hospital gowns by April. Meanwhile, Kang Na Hsiung, a manufacturer of hygiene products and synthetic textiles, has revived its production lines for melt-blown non-wovens—the main raw material used to make surgical masks—which had been mothballed for at least five years. The company has ramped up its daily production of melt-blown non-wovens to 2.4 tonne, which can make more than 3 million face masks.
Taiwanese textile manufacturers’ quick action to integrate the resources and capabilities of all parties to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and the ability to assemble a mask and protective clothing production line in a short period of time, has echoed the long recognized traits "quick response", "reliability", "sustainable innovation", and "profound professional knowledge and experience" of Taiwan textile industry. At this critical moment, Taiwan’s textile industry is ready to support its partners to weather out this epidemic and work together to focus on the future of medical fabrics and garment markets!
