Protecting Americans with American-Made Nitrile Gloves
INTRODUCING THE FIRST EVER SINGLE-USE SUSTAINABLE NITRILE GLOVE MADE 100% IN THE USA!
The United States consumes 110 billion medical exam gloves each year yet only produces about one percent of them domestically. How did SHOWA® respond to the demand for U.S.-made PPE? They invested in a new state-of-the-art glove manufacturing in Fayette, Alabama USA!
THE LESSON
Let's never forget that when the coronavirus virus swarmed our shorelines in the spring of 2020, it devastated supply chains forcing our country into a panic to secure essential supplies to protect employees and patients from infection. With no domestic manufacturing available, America beckoned for our country to produce USA made PPE to prevent or minimize exposure to hazardous workplace elements and reduce potential cross-contamination of viruses, germs and other on the job-related injuries.
RESHORING FOR THE BETTER GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY
PPE supplies such as single-use nitrile gloves, which provide vital two-way barrier for medical professionals and front-line workers, are almost exclusively produced overseas. While in very high demand, procurement was severely hampered by supply chain issues in regions such as Asia. This provided an opportunity for companies such as SHOWA® to boost their domestic production and begin supplying customers who prefer to buy from U.S.-based sources.
BACKGROUND
SHOWA® is a vertically integrated hand protection manufacturer that makes protective gloves for all industries and applications, offering chemical, anti-cut and anti-static industrial hand protection products. SHOWA® is currently the only U.S. manufacturer of single-use nitrile gloves, through its U.S. manufacturing facility in Fayette, Alabama.
The company invented the world’s very first single-use nitrile glove in the early 1990s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in response to latex allergic reactions. The company has also developed the world’s very first biodegradable product line with their Eco Best Technology® (EBT) in the glove industry across single-use latex-free nitrile gloves and reusable chemical-resistant product offerings! Boasting GreenCircle® Certification, these EBT gloves achieved accelerated biodegradation of 82% in only 386 days!
BOOSTING U.S. PPE SUPPLIES
In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, SHOWA® launched a massive multimillion-dollar expansion project at the company’s Fayette plant that is now coming to fruition, and it will increase production capabilities of single-use nitrile gloves in the United States. After the plant expansion was completed last October, the company started to build two high-speed production lines to further increase its PPE output. Those lines are now near completion, and lines three and four should be completed over the next year or so, says Gil LeVerne, SHOWA’s director of marketing for the Americas and Oceania. SHOWA® also has broken ground on two 40,000-square-foot facilities that each will house four high-speed production lines.
“We are making 600,000 pieces a day today,” LeVerne says. "Things are happening quickly now, and SHOWA® will continue to double capacity probably every two years until we are ultimately making 3 billion gloves annually in 2024, when we have all 12 lines completed.”
LeVerne also noted that SHOWA’s Fayette plant is in the middle of a hiring surge amid rising demand for its gloves. According to one report, the plant had 270 employees at the end of January and was adding eight to 10 new workers per week, with the expectation to eventually grow to 400 employees.
Additionally, SHOWA® is one of five companies providing gloves to the Department of Defense under $400 million in contracts paid for from a second coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in December 2020, according to a report in Stars and Stripes, the newspaper for the U.S. military.
“Protecting the homeland, creating jobs and bringing domestic supply back to the U.S. so it can be trucked to just about anywhere within a day or two is a big deal,” LeVerne says, adding that the plant expansion has received considerable support from federal, state and local governments.
SUSTAINABLE SINGLE-USE NITRILE GLOVES MADE IN THE USA!
Taking the next step in sustainability, SHOWA® has also expanded its biodegradable product range of single-use hand protection products featuring Eco Best Technology® to produce the first U.S. made sustainable single-use nitrile glove right in Alabama, USA that also includes a FDA 510K Class 1 Medical Exam Glove. Offering the same protection, texture, performance and grip as their regular glove counterparts,they feature EBT accelerated breakdown which is ultimately better for the planet!
HOW EBT BIODEGRADATION WORKS
When SHOWA® EBT gloves are disposed of in biologically active landfill, microorganisms are attracted to the EBT material (a proprietary additive), which allows them to consume, metabolize and break down the gloves into natural compounds. This means gloves with EBT can’t begin to biodegrade before disposal.
GREENCIRCLE CERTIFIED BIODEGRADABLE
These abilities have achieved the GreenCircle certification for a growing number of protective gloves that meet all the necessary qualifications to be certified for accelerated biodegradable claims. The ASTM D5526 certification demonstrated that SHOWA® EBT gloves achieved 82% biodegradation in only 386 days.
“Given the large number of gloves now being used every day in hospitals, schools, labs and manufacturing facilities, it’s important for SHOWA® to be part of the solution and not a part of the problem,” says Jason Beddigs, a national account manager at SHOWA®. “All the gloves we’re going to be manufacturing in Fayette, whether it’s industrial grade, food grade or medical grade, they are going to fit into our sustainability initiative,” he says, “and that’s good news for anybody who cares about climate change or global warming.”
With COVID-19, single-use glove waste has risen over tenfold due to the spike in usage. With a 100 billion pairs of gloves being disposed annually pre-pandemic, now is the time to consider a better solution for our planet! Show your support and buy American! All you need to do now is tap the link and...
+shop for USA Made SHOWA® Nitrile Gloves here
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- +watch YouTube video about SHOWA® here
- +watch YouTube video on Eco Best Technology® (EBT)
- +view YouTube video of SHOWA's USA glove manufacturing facility here
