Renewables developer and EV maker join fight against Covid-19

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Spanish renewables company Grenergy has made its contribution to fighting the spread of Covid-19 by donating 55,000 pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) to Madrid City Council.

The Madrid-based company on Friday announced 30,000 pairs of nitrile gloves, 15,000 N95 protective masks and 5,000 each of protective glasses and suits were on their way from China and expected to be delivered in “the coming days.”

Grenergy said it had linked up with the Chinese network of Madrid-based marketing business MARP Marketing y Producto SA to order the PPE.

The renewables business, which is also based in Madrid, said the equipment would be issued by the local authority to police, fire fighters, ambulance drivers, undertakers and health centers and would also be used by civil protection staff and workers at the Madrid Salud public health laboratory and the Mercamadrid fresh produce wholesale market.

BYD

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The development follows the announcement earlier in the month that Chinese electric vehicle and electronics business BYD had opened what it described as, “the world’s largest mass-produced face masks plant.”

At that point, on March 13, BYD said it was producing 5 million masks and 300,000 bottles of disinfectant per day and raising output by 300,000-500,000 masks daily as it installed 5-10 mask production machines at a Shenzhen facility previously used to assemble smart phones.

The company, which at that stage was churning out the equipment for use in China, said chairman and CEO Wang Chuanfu had convened a Covid-19 task force of BYD business division leaders and more than 8,000 engineers in late January. The engineers pushed through the R&D and manufacturing necessary for face mask production in one week, rather than the usual 15-30 days, and did the same for medical hand sanitizers in just six days, before starting deliveries eight days later.

Mask production began at Shenzhen on February 8, BYD said, with machines in operation around the clock and hundreds of staff working day and night shifts.

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