Jcb Joins Englands National Call To Action Over Ventilator Shortage

JCB received a direct appeal from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to help plug the national ventilator shortage and to help save lives of Coronavirus patients.

JCB is restarted production at a factory which has been closed for nearly two weeks as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. But instead of making cabs for JCB diggers, the plant is being mobilised to make special steel housings for a brand new design of ventilator from Dyson. A minimum of 10,000 of the JCB housings are earmarked for manufacture once Dyson receives regulatory approval for its design.

The first prototypes of the housings have been delivered to Dyson after rolling off the production line at JCB’s £50 million Cab Systems factory in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, which Boris Johnson visited during the election campaign. The factory fell silent on March 18th along with eight other JCB UK manufacturing plants after a fall in demand caused by the Coronavirus crisis. Mass production of the housings could start in a matter of days.

JCB Chairman Lord Bamford said: “When we were approached by the Prime Minister we were determined, as a British company, to help in any way we could. This project has gone from design to production in just a matter of days and I am delighted that we have been able to deploy the skills of our talented engineering, design and fabrication teams so quickly at a time of national crisis.”

JCB’s response to the national call to action would see the return to work for around 50 employees affected by an extended company shutdown. JCB suspended production at its nine UK production plants until at least the end of April and furloughed the vast majority of its 6,500 workforce.