Taking action when needed

When hospitals needed supplies, Trioworld stepped up. But have we learnt any lessons from the covid situation?

Just-in-time deliveries was a great concept, until the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global supply chains. Suddenly, Swedish healthcare was facing a global virus outbreak without important protective equipment.

Trioworld is one of the companies that from the beginning of the pandemic tried to solve the lack of products in the medical system. The first step was to rebuild one of the company’s production sites to produce protective aprons for the hospitals.

Only three weeks after the inquiries from hospitals in the Stockholm region were heard, the first large-scale deliveries of protective clothing from Trioworld’s factory were made. Deliveries that required massive innovation and rebuilding of machines that normally were used for other purposes. Investments continued in 2020 and 2021 with the development of new, more user-friendly models of protective clothing. A factory to produce protective clothing was set up in Landskrona. One of the largest and most ambitious investments Trioworld has made in such a short period of time.

Swedish authorities and healthcare institutions have stated that Swedish based companies made an impressive effort during the pandemic by quickly reorganizing their operations to manufacture protective equipment for healthcare. The manufacture of protective equipment has for many years been outsourced to companies in countries in Asia, mainly China.

But the benefits don’t end with the peace of mind that comes from local sourcing. Trioworld’s aprons also comes with an immense improvement in sustainability through a circular approach where used aprons are collected, washed, melted down and made into new plastic aprons. This circular flow minimizes the need for new plastic and reduces the amount of plastic going to incineration. In this way, emissions from the use of plastic aprons have been reduced by almost 85 percent. Trioworld received Region Stockholm’s environmental award for “a pioneering project on recycling plastic in healthcare” in 2022 for this circular approach.

Oskar Karlsson, CPO at Trioworld
“The covid pandemic showed how vulnerable today’s system was and the war in Ukraine shows that unfortunately new conflicts can emerge again. Now we must ensure that Sweden is able to meet these challenges so that we are not left without important gear when it is needed the most.”

Naturally, it is important that we learn from the lessons during Covid so that we do not end up in the same place again. Swedish manufacturers need to maintain a competence and production capacity of protective clothing. This can not only be activated in the event of a pandemic, but it needs to continuously deliver to the Swedish healthcare system.

It goes without saying, but companies like Trioworld are very proud of the job they did during the pandemic and, even though its share of the overall turnover is small, this line of products remain a part of the post-pandemic supply chain, with the possibility for a large scale-up, should the need arise again.

Published: Aug 03 2022

Companies

Trioworld

Industrial
Sweden

Taking action when needed

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