InkSmith expands PPE production

A local company has garnered attention from community business leaders, organizations, celebrities, and government officials. 

Premier Doug Ford visited The Canadian Shield factory on Friday as the team highlighted its latest endeavour.

Jeremy Hedges, CEO of InkSmith, said they're now producing made-in-Canada surgical masks.

With their current production, they'll make about 50-million masks a year. 

“We're making about 150,000 surgical masks a day. We're still ramping up, so our intention is to scale up to as many as 500-million masks a year to make sure that we cover the needs of Canada, and start exporting to other countries so we can help around the world,” said Hedges. 

He added they're also offering reusable cloth masks, and noted this has not affected production of The Canadian Shield.

“We're still making 200,000 face shields a day, and we're one of the bigger manufacturers in North America. We just know that we have to continue to build Canada's capacity to manufacture PPE, we don't want to be in this position again … we've learned the lesson, and we don't want to rely on global supply chains.”

Hedges said he feels like it's their duty to continue to expand into other pieces of critical PPE to ensure Canadians' safety. 

To learn more about protective products offered by InkSmith and its company The Canadian Shield, click here. 
 

We had a blast learning about how @InkSmith3D in #Waterloo managed to retool their factory within months to produce up to 200,000 face shields a day! And, they’ve hired 300+ more people. Great #OntarioSpirit here! pic.twitter.com/OeqlgHrv6I

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) July 17, 2020