Nissan offers up plant to help in NHS visor distribution and funds increased production

A North East automotive plant has joined efforts to deliver hundreds of thousands of face visors to the NHS.

Nissan, which has a large plant in Sunderland, has offered up its assembly line to sort and pack PPE (personal protective equipment) for frontline healthcare workers.

More than 77k visors will leave the plant by the end of this week, with up to 100k being distributed each week from next week.

Nissan has also provided funds for an ‘injection moulding tool’ that increases the number of parts produced.

The initial team of volunteers at the plant took delivery of hundreds of boxes of visor parts from people from across the country who have been using their own 3D printers to make the visors.

Production was initially kicked off with the support of crowdfunding.

Nissan’s production director, Adam Pennick, commented: “It’s great to be able to play our part in helping to provide the NHS with these visors.

“Our people are experts in the logistics behind an effective supply chain, and we certainly weren’t short of volunteers for this project.”

Anthony Grilli, who set up the project with his brothers, added: “We had the ability to support the national effort to produce more PPE for frontline health workers and we just had to help.

“We quickly mobilised to produce parts using our 3D printing capability at home and we’re grateful to everyone that donated through our crowdfunding site to help us get this going.”