Full Answer
How many products does Puritan sell?
Today, Puritan sells more than 1,200 products, including 65 different kinds of swabs, ranging from a simple, “all-purpose” cotton swab to a pre-moistened, sterile macrofoam swab and collection tube used to detect human norovirus on surfaces. All told, Puritan pulls in more than $45 million a year in sales.
How many medical swabs does Puritan make each month?
The company makes an average of 19 million swabs of all kinds each month, a number that could go up “if we had more people.” ▲ Packing and labeling medical swabs. Puritan says its employees will implement social distancing where possible and wear protective clothing like gloves and masks.
What does Puritan Medical Products Company do?
The Company offers swabs and other single-use products for the healthcare, diagnostic, forensic, critical environment, food safety, and drug manufacturing industries. Puritan Medical Products Co operates worldwide.
Does the federal government buy from Puritan?
The federal government, however, doesn’t buy directly from Puritan. Instead it helps coordinate with Puritan and other medical suppliers and distributors to get the swabs where they need to go. “We are ramping up to produce and wrap a million swabs a week that we need to put into the supply chain across the U.S.,” Templet says.
What is Puritan's 102nd year?
Puritan is now in our 102nd year of business. We founded our company on the principles of pride in achieving excellence and determination to succeed. Our customers know us for quality, consistency, outstanding customer service, and our commitment to partnering with them in their pursuit of these same principles.
How are swabs sterilized?
Sterilization is an important part of medical device manufacturing. And even single-use products like swabs go through a highly effective sterilization process to ensure they pose negligible health risks to patients. Apr 28, 2021.
Does Puritan have patents?
Puritan continues to innovate and gets two new patents protecting HydraFlock and PurFlock Ultra swabs.
Where are Puritan swabs made?
Located in Guilford, Maine (population 1,521), Puritan is one of two companies that make essentially all of the swabs used for coronavirus testing. (The other, Copan Diagnostics Inc., is in Italy, an epicenter of the deadly virus.) If swabs are necessary for testing, and if testing is crucial to slowing the virus’s spread, then it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the world’s future depends, at least in part, on Puritan.
How many products does Puritan sell?
Today, Puritan sells more than 1,200 products, including 65 different kinds of swabs, ranging from a simple, “all-purpose” cotton swab to a pre-moistened, sterile macrofoam swab and collection tube used to detect human norovirus on surfaces. All told, Puritan pulls in more than $45 million a year in sales.
How many hours a day does Puritan run?
Puritan is extending its five-days-a-week schedule to six, running “at least” 20 hours a day, Templet says. (Copan is also scaling up, says spokesperson Irene Acerbi, to 24/7 production and exporting “everywhere in the world,” including shipping the maximum possible to the U.S.)
What is a flocked swab?
The coronavirus test uses a swab made with short fibers called “flock” (think: tiny polyester cilia, like nose hairs) that get placed on the end of a plastic applicator—wood can interfere with test results—creating a soft tip that will eventually (and gently, one hopes) get shoved up a patient’s nose. Unlike cotton-tipped swabs you find at the drugstore, these flocked swabs are designed specifically for picking up microscopic organisms.
What is the biggest challenge for Puritan?
The biggest challenge for Puritan, though, is a constant shortage of workers. The problem comes up for companies of all sizes, and it’s been exacerbated by Trump’s ever stricter immigration policies. Executives complained about the lack of job applicants in September—the town is tiny, older employees are retiring, and new people aren’t exactly moving to Guilford in droves—and Templet repeats it to me on the phone. The company has 535 employees total. It’s continually looking for more machine operators and mechanics and is hoping it can get some extra hands from college-age workers returning home early and recently laid-off workers from nearby employers. The medical side will also borrow from the Hardwood side to the extent possible, Templet says.
Is a swab necessary for testing?
If swabs are necessary for testing, and if testing is crucial to slowing the virus’s spread, then it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the world’s future depends, at least in part, on Puritan. ▲ Founded in 1919, Puritan and its sister company Hardwood sell products under several trademarked names.
Is Puritan a sister company?
I visited Puritan last September, on a very different reporting trip. I was there to learn about Puritan’s sister business, Hardwood Products Co., located just across the street, to do a lighthearted article about American-made popsicle sticks. The two companies, which, since a restructuring in 2002, are separate but still affiliated, were nearing the end of a hundred-year anniversary and had a compelling, all-American story to tell. Here was a bustling and successful manufacturer making nearly all its own machinery to create innovative products that keep it ahead of Chinese copycats. Templet and other executives voiced frustration with China’s lax enforcement of intellectual property law, and support for the Trump administration’s willingness to confront it for the transgressions. Yet, Puritan managed to thrive long before the trade war and is positioned to do so afterward, too.
