Production of masks, hand sanitizer, other PPE fades as demand drops

Manufacturers on Long Island are experiencing a rare boom-and-not-quite-bust cycle when it comes to personal protective equipment.

They scrambled three years ago to convert production lines to meet the skyrocketing demand for face masks and face shields, hand sanitizer, safety partitions and other PPE aimed at warding off the coronavirus. But demand is now a fraction of what it was because of the lifting of government restrictions on public gatherings and widespread vaccination.

Most factories no longer make PPE and are trying to sell their remaining inventory. A few have shifted to surgical masks and other specialty products used by health care providers.

"Manufacturers have slowed down production or even mothballed their [production] lines until the next pandemic," said Patrick Boyle, executive director of the 100-member manufacturers' trade group IgniteLI. "But [in 2020 and 2021] making PPE got people back to work and helped health care workers and other first responders."

He recalled the herculean efforts of local factories to pivot away from producing liquor,  vitamins and generic drugs, HVAC equipment and guitar strings toward PPE items, such as face masks and face shields. The plants have since reverted to what they were doing before COVID-19 struck in early 2020.

"To start manufacturing PPE wasn't as simple as flipping a switch," Boyle said. "Long Island wasn't equipped for this type of production," which was dominated by low-wage countries such as China. "But people jumped in, retooled their shop floors, bought equipment with government grants and began making PPE" by late 2020 and early 2021, he said.

In the pandemic's early days, making PPE was viewed as patriotic, akin to the mobilization of manufacturers on the Island and nationwide during World War II for the production of guns, tanks, planes and ships. Those factories emerged from the war with a more diverse portfolio of products and better technology.

Boyle said he hopes that will be the case for PPE producers.

"We are stronger because we went through this," Boyle said. "Manufacturers learned so much about their capabilities, about the importance of being flexible."

Producing PPE also kept the lights on at some companies. 

“This business wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t made hand sanitizer,” said Abby Gruppuso, head of operations at The Better Man Distilling Co. in Patchogue.

“Sales of hand sanitizer provided a consistent backbone of income so we could pay our bills and make sure our few employees were OK," she said, standing near a 300-gallon still used to make vodka, gin, whiskey and bourbon — and hand sanitizer in mid-2020.

Better Man hadn’t officially opened when people began falling ill to the rapidly spreading virus and then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo shut down all nonessential activity for about three months, starting on March 22, 2020. At the time, the distillery was only making two products, compared with 12 today.  

“My parents thought they would lose their house,” Gruppuso said. Her father, Anthony, founded Better Man and together with her mother owns an auto body shop. 

“We were flapping around like a fish out of water, trying to figure out how to continue to run" Better Man, she recalled.

A lifeline arrived in the form of an email from the New York State Distillers Guild encouraging its 150 members to start making hand sanitizer.

Gruppuso’s aunt Giulia Hamacher, the director of processes at Better Man and holder of a doctorate in chemistry, researched the World Health Organization’s production process for sanitizer. She also learned how to achieve self-certification through the Food and Drug Administration and about the necessary ingredients, including a bittering agent to prevent consumers from drinking the sanitizer.

The hand sanitizer was 80% alcohol, which initially came from fermenting corn mash set aside for vodka production. Later, the alcohol came from donations of expired beer from Blue Point Brewing Co. and the former BrickHouse Brewery and Restaurant, both in Patchogue, and Montauk Brewing Co. in Montauk, Hamacher said.

Better Man turned out about 4,000 quart-sized bottles of sanitizer from March to June 2020 before reverting to spirits manufacturing. Customers included PSEG-LI, the U.S. Postal Service, other manufacturers, and starting in summer 2020, the public via an online farmers market.

“We thought we would be supplying hospitals, but the official pipelines filled their orders,” Hamacher said. “So, we focused on helping other businesses, such as aerospace and defense manufacturers that were essential and stayed open."

Better Man is now focused on expanding its wholesale spirits business beyond the metropolitan area. It produced 12,000 bottles of spirits last year, plus many barrels of whiskey. The workforce has grown to 20 people, and they work in 12,000 square feet, up from 6,000 three years ago.

But Hamacher said Better Man is still willing to make hand sanitizer, if the orders are large enough.

The fluctuations in demand for PPE can be seen in the consumption of general-use masks and non-surgical or isolation gowns that protect a health care worker's clothing by Northwell Health, the region’s largest health care system.

Northwell’s 21 hospitals and nursing homes used 117,000 general-use masks per day, on average, at the pandemic’s height in March/April 2020. That was a 947% increase over the pre-COVID-19 usage of 11,180 per day, according to Phyllis McCready, the system's chief procurement officer.

Since Northwell lifted its mask-wearing mandate on March 21, the system has been using 52,000 masks per day, on average. That's still 365% more than were being used before the virus, she said.

As for non-surgical gowns, Northwell used 76,000 per day, on average, at the pandemic’s height, or 624% more than the 10,500 pre-COVID-19. After the mask mandate was removed last month, 11,000 gowns are being used daily, or nearly 5% more than in 2019, McCready said.

The state now requires hospital systems such as Northwell to keep a 60-day supply of PPE and other critical supplies on hand. “We are as prepared as we can be. The question is what is enough” when it comes to PPE, she said.

During the COVID-19 emergency, state grants totaling $2.2 million helped five manufacturers in Nassau and Suffolk counties convert their production lines to PPE or increase the amount they were making, according to Empire State Development, the state’s primary business-aid agency.

“The COVID Manufacturing Grant program was an effective tool that allowed many New York businesses to remain open when the pandemic was at its worst,” said agency spokeswoman Kristin Devoe. “We are happy with the program and even more proud of the ingenuity demonstrated by New York’s business community during the pandemic.”

The largest grants went to Islandaire in St. James and A&Z Pharmaceutical Inc. in Hauppauge.

Islandaire, a maker of thru-the-wall air conditioning and heating units, received $800,000 to produce at least 2 million surgical masks. A&Z, a maker of vitamins and generic prescription drugs, secured $700,000 to make N95 masks, according to ESD records.

“The government money was a great encouragement for us to look beyond our core business,” said Emma Li Xu, CEO and board chair at A&Z.

The company installed a mask production line after the sole market for its vitamins and drugs, China sealed its borders to slow the coronavirus’ spread in 2020 and 2021. The state grant went toward the purchase of a mask machine from California, she said.

“I wanted my employees to have something else to do,” Li Xu said, adding that A&Z has about 150 workers at its two Hauppauge factories. “Some were fearful about their jobs because our business had slowed down. We didn’t want to lay off employees, and we didn’t have to,” she said.

However, demand for N95 masks fell during the nine months to one year that it took for A&Z to win approval from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to produce and sell the masks. Still, A&Z moved forward with its plan, in part because it had received the state grant.

“We donated more than we sold,” Li Xu said, estimating only 10% of the N95 masks were purchased by retailers, all of them in the United States. “But we took the government funding and we felt that we should try to make the masks,” she said.

A&Z has decommissioned its mask machine and is now attempting to sell the remaining inventory of N95s. Its market for vitamins and drugs in China bounced back after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions.  

"I never saw [mask manufacturing] as a vision for the future of this company,” Li Xu said.

Besides the state grant program, funding for factories to convert their shop floor to PPE production or increase their output came from local industrial development agencies, National Grid and manufacturing assistance centers.

In April 2020, the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency established the first sales-tax exemption program for PPE equipment purchases in the state. Premier Care Industries Inc., a maker of sanitary wipes in Hauppauge, was the only participant, saving $28,230, according to Kelly Murphy, the IDA's deputy executive director.

National Grid provided a $2,500 grant to AB Bioinnovations, a technology startup located at Stony Brook University. The skin care company used the grant to turn out antiviral and antibacterial sprays and coated masks, it said in its funding application.

Stony Brook’s Manufacturing & Technology Resource Consortium, which assists local factories, provided matching grants to AB Bioinnovations and another company. The MTRC also helped secure federal grants of up to $10,000 each for eyeglass-frame designer and distributor ClearVision Optical in Hauppauge and AB Bioinnovations. 

ClearVision used the funds to build an e-commerce website, where the public can purchase masks designed by ClearVision and other PPE, according to company executive Jennifer Trakhtenberg.

MTRC project coordinator Cynthia Colón said, "The pandemic brought to light how much of our lifesaving resources are made overseas, from PPE to antibiotics. We now see moves being made to change this.”

One example is Banyan USA Inc. in Hauppauge.

Launched in June 2020 in response to requests for PPE supplies from the customers of a sister company, Banyan has four machines that each produce 90 masks per minute. A $400,000 state grant helped defray startup costs of $900,000, according to executives.

Banyan began with general-use masks but switched to surgical masks after receiving FDA certification for them in September 2021, said Ricardo Ryan, vice president of operations.

From its red-white-and-blue logo to the Made In USA embossed on every mask, the company emphasizes its American roots to stand out from foreign rivals and to woo the public, he said, adding that the mask fabric, ear loops and nosepiece come from suppliers in Georgia and Rhode Island.

Ryan said Banyan’s 10 employees “were making 4 million masks a month in 2020 and 2021” by working 10- to 12-hour shifts on weekdays and six hours on Saturdays. They now work eight-hour shifts on weekdays due to lower consumer demand.  

“The staff is excited to make something here and to have a relationship with local health care institutions,” he said, standing in the 4,000-square-foot factory.

The health care sector — hospitals, medical and dental offices, urgent care centers — are the focus of current sales efforts, said Bill Reitzig, the company’s chief operating officer.

“We can sustain the business on the surgical [masks] because they are FDA approved, which is a big deal” to health care customers, he said. “We may have fallen into [mask manufacturing], but this business is not just a flash in the pan.”