- The material will be used to protect health personnel in Madrid, one of the most severely affected cities in the world by the coronavirus.
- The donation is part of the CovidMakers Getafe solidarity campaign promoted by the residents of this city, in an exclusively altruistic manner.
Valencia, 6th April 2020 – The Valencian startup ADBioplastics, specialized in the manufacture of bioplastics, has made a donation of 200 kg of its PLA-Premium product in the solidarity initiative carried out by CovidMakers Getafe, which aims to manufacture and distribute protective screens to protect health personnel against COVID-19.
“We are a very small startup but with a great sense of civic duty. As soon as they proposed to donate material, we did not think twice. We all must row in the same direction since the maximum objective right now is to save human lives ”, Lorena García, CMO at ADBioplastics, has explained.
The campaign started thanks to the contact maintained by the head of CovidMakers Getafe, Alfonso Donoso, with ADBioplastics where he urgently requested plastic material to be able to produce protective screens on an industrial scale. “We are a group of 200 residents of Getafe, in Madrid, who have altruistically joined together to put our 3D printers at the service of the common good of the people. The visors have been donated, above all, to the hospital, nursing homes, police, civil protection, and even to the makeshift hospital at IFEMA», Donoso declared.
The PLA distribution has been done by the members of civil protection, the Getafe police, the army, and even taxi drivers. “Very soon, we will cover the entire municipality and we will go to others also punished by this virus”, Donoso has mentioned.
In ADBioplastics “we have supplied the material in pellets. This has been sent to PESL, a BQ supplier located in Huesca. They will transform it into filaments and suitable for 3D printers», José Ángel Ramos, CTO, and coordinator of the shipment of this donation to Madrid, the epicenter of the coronavirus in Spain, said.
«We will add to these filaments more than 20 dyes, that we already use and we will verify that the change of pellets does not affect the quality of the final product» Astrid Sánchez-Pastor, 3D & Robotics Business Unit Director at BQ, has added. She is proud to participate in this campaign because, as a Spanish company, “we try to do our bit for the lack of protective equipment for medical personnel. We are very committed and at this moment all the printers in our offices and factories are dedicated only to print masks”.
So far, BQ has printed and distributed more than 20,000 units throughout Spain. And in a few days, those same masks will be made with ADBioplastics’ PLA-Premium.
ADBioplastics background
ADBioplastics is a company that manufactures custom-made bioplastics, to replace the traditional plastics and contribute to a greener planet. Its leitmotiv is «With our bioplastics, we want to make the world a better place to live.» Its PLA-Premium product is biobased because it comes from a renewable and inexhaustible, and compostable source, the requirement set by the European Union (European Standard EN-13432 – 2000) and which will help to comply with the regulations, which will enter into force in 2030 while taking care of the environment.