Vantage Specialties, Inc. Helping to Fight COVID-19
Revere Customers Doing Their Part to Fight COVID-19
Revere is proud to be a supplier to customers making a difference in the fight against COVID 19.
One such customer, Vantage Specialties, Inc., a Gurnee-based chemicals company that produces key ingredients in personal care products, frozen and refrigerated food products, cleaning supplies and more, has shifted its manufacturing from a steady output of its usual supply-chain ingredients to include an intensive production of sanitizer, doled out in drum-sized barrels for clients such as the U.S. military and major airlines.
"All of this is new," said Drew Richardson, vice president of manufacturing. "We haven't actually made consumed products before."
While Vantage is still producing ingredients for other products, Richardson said the company was convinced by the U.S. Armed Forces to join a growing list of companies shifting production to make coronavirus-related supplies.
At first, Richardson said, Vantage was going to create small amounts of sanitizer for itself, which the company saw as an efficient way to follow government guidelines and safety protocols for its essential workers.
That changed when the military asked if Vantage could do "drums or tanker-truck quantities for them," Richardson said.
After long hours put in by employees to streamline the regulatory approval process in just a matter of weeks, the company was producing enough sanitizer to fulfill its orders and even donate to local entities, such as the Lake County Health Department, Richardson said.
"It's very difficult to just donate drum-sized barrels though," Richardson said. Currently, management is figuring out a way to bottle the sanitizer into three- and four-ounce containers, which may have to be done by hand by employees.
Richardson said employees' morale has been bolstered through the tough times by a sense of purpose through the pandemic. "It's been somewhat of a personal mission for a lot of our employees," he said, adding that sanitizer production hasn't been, and probably won't be, part of the company's "core business."
Two other Vantage facilities, a plant in Dayton, Ohio that also produces sanitizers and a glycerine factory in Chicago, have also ramped up production of their material.
