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The Irish brand, O’Neills is putting the boot into COVID-19.
It announced less than a week ago it would be redirecting its sports apparel business to manufacture scrubs to assist medical workers during the COVID-19 outbreak.
It’s not the only organisation to face up to the COVID crisis. USA Weightlifting has shifted online, while the National Football Musuem, despite closing its doors, is keeping fans engaged on social media.
O’Neills, dubbed the “Choice Of Champions” brand, established in 1918 is the biggest manufacturer of sportswear in Ireland and provides kits to 31 of the 32 counties in Gaelic football and hurling currently.
As per RTÉ, more than 100,000 sets of protective medical clothing (i.e. scrubs) could be produced in the immediate term by O’Neills in an effort to stop COVID-19.
Business Of Sport interviewed a spokersperson this week to find out a bit more about the fantastic initiative.
Why O’Neills decided to star producing this gear to take on COVID-19?
“To help healthcare workers as they need additional PPE equipment and we have the capability to change our manufacturing to meet the need.”
O’Neills has 150 staff working on the scrubs orders, with the fabric was dyed in their Dublin dye house. The anti-bacterial polygiene coating used in the brand’s sportswear has proved ideal for surgical scrubs and because it has its our own dye house, in Dublin, it can apply this finishing property onto the fabric.
While unable to comment on the overall volume of orders, the spokesperson said that the demands were changing day-to-day given the evolving issue.
Currently the move is for the Health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland but there has been interest from Britain, the Republic of Ireland and even further overseas also.
How did we come to the decision?
The Western Health Trust approached the company to see if we could help them, as there is a severe a shortage of scrubs for frontline healthcare workers. We got some scrubs from the trust and immediately made some samples for approval. The samples made were approved and we went into production.
There are currently just under 3,000 reported cases of COVID-19 in the island of Ireland.
