LILESVILE — Fabric manufacturer Hornwood has joined the fight against COVID-19 by converting some of their equipment to produce certain components of the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) worn by health professionals.
Founded in 1946 by Ken Horne and Fred Wood, Hornwood has been in the same location since 1971, when it moved from Wadesboro to Lilesville. As a service-oriented, solution-based manufacturer of fabrics, Hornwood employs 350 people in its 300,000 square foot facility. Many of Hornwood’s products are made using yarns that have been formed from a recycled or renewable resource.
Hornwood Inc. also participates in local scholarship programs and donates both time and experience to local elementary students through an after school tutoring program which begins each year in September.
As COVID-19 began to spread in the U.S., Hornwood started to receive calls inquiring if they produce the personal protective equipment (PPE) worn by health care workers, which they didn’t at the time, explained Hornwood President Chuck Horne.
“The second follow up question would be, ‘Well, do you make the fabric components that go into the PPE and, if so, can you direct us somewhere that might be able to do the cut and sew?’” said Horne. “That’s been an interesting conversation.”
He added that this sudden need for manufacturers to shift their production revealed a troubling reality.
“What this illustrated was that a good proportion of these products are made in Asia, particularly China, both the fabric and the cut and sew,” said Horne. “(The United States) has come up way short in terms of our needs for these things.”
With the high volume of calls asking them to produce PPE, Hornwood Inc. decided to give it a go and start producing some of the material components of these masks. “These conversations kept happening. We kept getting calls. Over time, that evolved into, ‘What could you offer us?’ So, now, we’ve gotten some orders,” explained Horne.
“We can put anti-microbial finishes on the masks. We’ve gotten some fabrics to be used on the outer side of a face mask,” he said. “And we’ve gotten some orders for the stretch fabric that can be sliced into the ear-loop material for face masks.”
The primary product found in PPE is comprised of non-woven material. “It’s a method of making fabric where you, for a lack of a better sense, kind of glue the fibers together,” explained, Horne. “There is non-woven production in the U.S., but most of it is geared towards very specialty end uses like automotive interiors and soundproofing insulation.
Hornwood produces around 300,000 to 400,000 yards of fabric per week. About 20,000 of those yards are comprised of the components they’re producing for the PPE. “I don’t have any idea how many face masks that will make, but I’m sure it’s a bunch,” said Horne.
The components are distributed across the country upon completion. “The first company that bought anything from us is up in Maryland,” said Horne. “The next one is a company that is doing business supplying the military with some face masks and they’re on the West Coast. They have a facility in L.A. and one in Seattle. We have one more customer that’s in Illinois.”
Hornwood is taking every precaution during the production of these materials to ensure the safety of their employees as they work during the pandemic. “The biggest thing is cleaning. Constant cleaning. We have crews that go around several times on each shift,” said Horne.
Employees who operate equipment are also provided cleaning supplies in order to disinfect their machines upon arrival. “When they come in, the first thing they do is clean any contact points that they have, like touch screens, start and stop buttons, those types of things,” said Horne. “We’re just trying to adhere to the rules as much as possible for keeping people separated.”
Horne hopes that, once things return to normal, production of PPE will remain a permanent part of Hornwood’s operation. “I think it’s certainly been an eye-opening experience for folks to see how dependent we were on Asia for the production of so many of these things,” said Horne. “My hope is that a certain amount of it will stay here in the U.S. once this is all over.”