Supporting the larger community is something that has always been important to us here at Newton Commercial over the last 40 years as a family run locally established business employing over 50 people from the local area and we are incredibly proud to have been part of a team of amazing people who have made thousands of items of PPE for staff on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic here in our local community over the last few months.

PPE must now be one of the most used acronyms of 2020 and PPE has now become an essential part of the way that the world operates alongside COVID-19. At the beginning of UK lockdown, we were approached by Andy Gardiner, a local gentleman, who started East Suffolk PPE as part of an effort to support those on the front line of local services from GP surgeries to care homes and local hospitals and along with local individuals and businesses we joined the fight to support key front line workers. 

We, as a team at Newton Commercial, were able to lend our expertise and skills to increase the efficiency of the PPE manufacturing process and with our digital cutting machines were able to streamline the process of cutting scrubs, face shields and face masks in big numbers. We were also able to offer materials off the shelf in the production of face shields so that these products could be made straight away in high volume and our contacts were able to help us source more of these materials quickly to continue to keep up with massive demand. 

Big shout outs to Karen Graves, who had planned an early retirement in March, who stepped back in on weekends to help cut scrubs and face masks on our Bullmer CNC cutting machine all with a smile and to John White who continued to be furloughed from classic car action to support Andy from the liaison with the bigger network of East Suffolk PPE supporters to driving round and delivering boxes of PPE to the local community. 

Thanks also to Gary who used his expertise as our purchasing manager to help source the right type of plastic for the manufacture of thousands of face shields and his organisation skills to help Andy get PPE to where it was needed and to Dan Grant who cut hundreds of the face shields, all alongside helping our production team get back into manufacturing classic car trim. 

A massive well done to Andy and all of the the East Suffolk PPE team who helped keep essential services running during COVID-19. We are so proud to have been a part of this massive effort during difficult times for all and all our staff who have worked so hard