GWP Group based in Cricklade and Salisbury designs and manufactures packaging for companies across the globe. It is now working alongside Orthotropic Engineering to create visors to protect those working with patients displaying symptoms of coronavirus.

Having crowd-funded over £8,000 to cover the cost of materials, Orthotropic turned to GWP Group for manufacturing support including fabrication of foam strips and corrugated boxes to ship the visors.

Ian Heskins, Business Development Director at GWP Group, said:

  • “When we were approached by Matthew at Orthotropic we were only too happy to help. With the material costs covered by the crowdfunding, we were able to provide the manufacturing expertise and capacity at no cost.

Matthew Dawson, Director at Orthotropic, added:

  • “Two weeks ago a friend of mine arrived for her shift at work. She is a locum doctor, taking on extra shifts to help out as much as she can during the coronavirus crisis. When she arrived the only PPE available to her was a pair of plastic gloves. She is a friend, a wife, mother to two girls, a daughter and a sister, and she was helping patients with Covid-19 without the correct equipment.
  • “We were genuinely blown away by the public response to our fundraising as well as the rapid and generous response of suppliers such as GWP.”
The design for the visors has been uploaded to the Orthotropic website, making it freely available for any manufacturing businesses to use to create more supplies.