US Boat Builder Correct Craft Shifts Production to Make Face Masks for Hospitals
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Correct Craft, the parent of multiple boat and engine brands, including the high-end Nautique line of towboats, has reassigned production team members to Covid-19 work in its Orlando, Fla., and Modesto, Calif., facilities. The boatbuilder is making medical-grade face masks and plastic face shields for regional hospitals and other facilities.
“We’ve temporarily suspended boat production and are using some of those resources to do Covid-19 work,” Correct Craft CEO Bill Yeargin, told Robb Report. “Our Correct Craft team is happy to help our health care community during this global pandemic.”
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Its Ski Centurion facility in California has made about 1,000 face shields, which are being donated to local health care facilities. In Orlando, the company’s Watershed Innovations facility has been cutting large sheets of plastic which will be turned into 30,000 face shields. At the Nautique Boats facility, workers who typically sew high-end upholstery for its boats are sewing thousands of face masks made of a medical-grade material.
“Orlando Health had the special material for the face masks, but they didn’t have anyone to make them to their specs,” Yeargin says. “We have the capacity to make several hundred per day, so we expect to be making many thousands as time goes on.”
The industrial sewing machines used for creating Nautique’s boating upholstery were too large for the face masks, so staff members brought in sewing machines from their homes and Correct Craft purchased others.
Yeargin said Watershed Innovations has also cut 4,000 lbs. of plastic into smaller sizes so that workers and others outside the company can manufacture face shields on 3-D printers they have at home. These will be donated to regional health facilities.
“This weekend I was contacted by the Mayor of Oviedo and asked if we would make several hundred masks for city employees,” Yeargin says. “We agreed to do this and will be making masks for the city as well as multiple local health-care facilities. I have to say I’m proud of our team for stepping up to this. They have diligently worked to bring as much help and encouragement to our local health care community as they can.”
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