“Why order something as fundamental and necessary as a procedure mask from an international source 6,000 miles away? Instead of letting dollars exit the country, it’s a better idea to think domestically to benefit local business.”
The local company’s work designing and manufacturing swabs and masks has spawned a new subsidiary, Precision ADM Medical. Photos courtesy of Precision ADM
in which they were already proficient, Petrak’s team quickly went to work designing and testing swabs, and jumping through regulatory hoops. In June, its CANSWAB became the first Canadian-made COVID-19 testing product to earn Health Canada approval. “This was a huge production which literally took us 100 days — incredibly fast,” says Petrak. “Having the quality engineering staff experienced in medical devices, we were able to quickly manoeuvre the regulatory process while we applied rigorous testing and validation to confirm safety.” Normally, swabs are manufactured by injection moulding. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, builds up the computer-designed component one layer at a time, using specified powdered materials. “3D printing is slightly more expensive than conventional manufacturing, but to design and manufacture something from being basically nonexistent using the conventional process is time-consuming, and with every change you’re adding three to four months prior to full production,” says Petrak. “To compare, we were able to make a required specific feature change in just a few days, because with a fleet of printers, it’s a digital transformation which you can make across all your platforms. “And once you develop a swab, in the long term you can then pivot back to conventional lower-cost solutions, but that takes months of development.” By late October, the company was manufacturing 120,000 3D-printed swabs per week. Both the provincial and federal governments were ordering swabs, and the company was developing export opportunities.
“We believe it will grow and we’ll be pivoting to other technologies to help offset that growth to produce one to two million per week,” Petrak says. The company expanded into 20,000 square feet of space and developed a high-volume manufacturing process with a fleet of three printers. “We hired 40-plus people and trained them. We hired something like 30 students who didn’t have jobs during the pandemic, which was very, very important to them.” At the same time it was designing swabs, Precision ADM was developing a reusable N95 respirator mask. In April, the Manitoba government put out a call for a local manufacturer to produce the masks, and it ordered 500,000 the following month. “This technology is highly sought after and it’s very expensive right now, with problems with import quality, access and volatile cost for the Canadian health-care system,” Petrak says. Precision ADM took a hard analytical look at available masks, and considered environmental impact, cost and overall safety to design a better, reusable mask made from recyclable materials. The company will also be making various disposable masks for medical applications. “The policy decision to look at domestic sourcing during these times is a good solution to a long-term supply chain problem,” Petrak says. It has generated economic development, which will spawn even more innovation and more employment. “Why order something as fundamental and necessary as a procedure mask from an international source 6,000 miles away? Instead of letting dollars exit the country, it’s a better idea to think domestically to benefit local business.” ■
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