STAFF AT a Wokingham factory making equipment to save coronavirus patients’ lives have spoken about their days and nights making six million pieces of equipment a week.
Around 100 new staff have joined the firm’s huge effort which has almost doubled production from 3.5 million items a week.
Luke Stacey, 28, started at Intersurgical as a mechanical design engineer on Monday, March 2, as the virus took hold in the UK.
“I was working here on new prototypes and products when with others I was drafted into production to help make i-view laryngoscopes,” he said.
The equipment, key to treating Covid-19 patients, includes a camera so breathing tubes can be inserted properly. Production has shot up from 100 to over 1450 a day.
Luke praised the production team’s “real sense of community” adding: “People are working together, it feels like a war effort. They’re from all aspects of life, people all held together by one aim.”
Luke is now back on his design work, but his partner Abigail Munday has joined the production team. The couple live in Molly Millars Lane, handily, the same road as Intersurgical.
The company makes the connections between patients and their ventilators, tubes, masks and filters.
UK logistics manager Sally Day, 60, of Finchampstead, has seen huge increases of goods leaving their warehouse.
Sally, with the firm for 34 years, said: “I look after distribution of all our products, mainly to the UK but also all over the world.
“Before Covid we had 18 pick and pack staff . . . . plus four others. Now we have 27-30 staff.
“Work goes on seven days and five nights a week. They’re picking and packing orders to go to the NHS. The volume of output is unbelievable.”
One hospital normally having two or three pallets of equipment recently had 26. London’s Nightingale Hospital took 107 pallets on one day.
“It’s felt exhausting at times for the guys picking and packing orders for us. Some days we’re sending out 4-500 pallets.
“We’ve got a very good team. They’ll do anything we ask, working to midnight or over the weekend,” she added.
“Over a lifetime working here I’ve never seen anything like this. But staff of this company always step up. Some have to be forced to have time off. We have a moral obligation to ensure that happens.”
Local distribution companies like Axis of Sandhurst and Delivered of Reading had been “a really good help.”
Sally’s husband Steve Day who started in production 28 years ago is now global manufacturing director.
Customer service manager Maxine Taylor, 49, of Aldermaston, said of her team: “It’s been absolutely amazing, they’ve come in early and worked late. We input orders for the whole of the UK.
“We try to keep smiling, we’ve got a fantastic team. We laugh a lot and even sing. Our sales director Stephen Williams plays us a different relevant song each morning on his phone. Recently it was The Police’s Don’t stand so close to me.”
Maxine, who has just clocked up 26 years with the firm, added, uncomplaining: “I only go home to sleep, I live here!” She is grateful to her family for housework, washing and dog walking: “Support from our families is really important to us all.”
When coronavirus broke out customers were anxious, she said. “Initially they wanted [their orders] now, today or tomorrow, but that’s not always possible when the world and its brother is asking for that as well.”
Customers now were more accepting of delivery times. The company worked hard to get out the volumes needed.
Managing director Mr Charles Bellm praised the firm’s 500+ staff at Wokingham for their “superb work” at full throttle for over six weeks. He added:
“Production is increasing every week as we get better and more efficient. We’re doing more every week. We’re doing our best.
“There is certainly the demand. We’re quite democratic in how we spread the supply globally. We do share it out.”
