Businesses across Portsmouth join forces to produce ventilators for coronavirus patients

North Harbour-based defence firm, BAE Systems and Havant-based Formula-one subcontractor, Monolution, make up some of the 27-strong VentilatorChallengeUK consortium.

Staff at Monolution have been working around the clock to manufacture components for ventilators.

A team of around 30 have swapped their usual tasks for creating a ‘large volume’ of components at the Havant-based site, working under social distancing guidelines.

Using 22 high-end five-axis machines, the team are creating control blocks, centre plates, absorber docks, mount plates, gas blocks and more for the Penlon ventilators, which will be used by the NHS.

Within a week of order placement Monolution, which has been working alongside McLaren for 13 years, was delivering parts.

One of the firm’s directors, Dean Cleverley said: ‘We’re used to a fast-paced working environment, but this is another level and the employees have definitely stepped up to the challenge. We are now working at full speed 24/7 to deliver large volumes weekly.

‘I think it’s very good for the local area that local companies are involved in something like this.

‘It’s also great to see a consortium of manufacturing giants come together to scale up production resulting in saving lives. This also proves why UK Manufacturing is one of the best in the world.’

‘This is the proudest moment of Monolution’s history and to be able to support our NHS and ultimately save lives is amazing.’

The consortium is headed by Dick Elsy, CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a group of manufacturing research centres in the UK.

Over the past week the consortium has been working hard to investigate production of a range of ventilator design options to meet a high-level specification for a Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator System developed by clinicians and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

The consortium has evaluated all requirements to design, manufacture, assemble and test components, as well as finished medical ventilators and has now had orders from the government in excess of 10,000.

Production will start this week in response to an urgent government call for industry help to ramp up production of a ventilator made by Smiths Group which supports those with complications from Covid-19.

The consortium, which also includes seven Formula One teams including McLaren and Mercedes, which are home to Lewis Hamilton, said they had taken staff from existing projects to help out in order to meet the national demand.

Portsmouth-based manufacturer Velocetec has also switched to production of ventilator parts.