Pentagon awards Green Bay manufacturer $2.75 million to produce more PPE material

ASHWAUBENON (WLUK) -- The Pentagon awarded NPS Corporation, a Green Bay manufacturer $2.75 million to produce more materials used to make PPE.

"It was pretty obvious that there was a big shortage of face masks and respirators and what not. We knew that our meltblown material which is a key component of the mask we knew it was in short supply and we ramped up our engineering talent and our production to convert our equipment over to making that material," NPS Corporation CEO Andrew Hetzel says.

The award from the U.S. Department of Defense will help the company produce more meltblown fibers.

"It became clear that the only way to resolve the tremendous shortfall was to get a lot more domestic production. This award will allow U.S. production to increase substantially," Hetzel says.

Hetzel says this material will be distributed to mask-makers nationally.

"The government is making sure that there's domestic production being set up all over the country," Hetzel says.

NPS says that an estimated 60 million N95 masks per month and 170 million surgical masks per month can be created by November 2021.

"They're really trying to make sure that if we ever have a pandemic like this again that we have plenty of domestic production," Hetzel says.

The Department of Defense says in a statement, "This contract award is part of the ongoing collaboration between DoD and HHS, led by the Department’s Joint Acquisition Task Force and funded through the CARES Act, to enable and support domestic industrial base expansion for critical medical resources.”

Hetzel says these masks will be made for frontline workers.

He says that this money is being used to pay for new machinery, materials, and labor.

Hetzel says the contract should create at least 30 new jobs.