The COVID-19 outbreak sends demand for cloth masks soaring, a small Taiwanese village is cashing in. Once known for making socks, the village is now helping people protect themselves from coronavirus.
Orders are pouring in and the factories are now busy around the clock-- something unheard of in the past 20 years.
Changhua County’s Shetou Village is serious about socks. This village has a reputation as a sock-manufacturing capital. But the COVID-19 outbreak has put socks on the back burner. Now, its factories are churning out cloth masks and mask covers.
0011 Workers here say they are having to work overtime to meet demand and orders come in from around the world.
The owner of one factory says that each order includes at least 100,000 masks.
To fill those kinds of orders, mechanization is key. At first, the masks were handmade by workers. But a production line of five workers can only finish 10,000 masks a day, while a machine can finish five times as many in the same amount of time. That’s why machines have now replaced workers at this factory.
It’s not clear how long mask-mania will last, but the factory owners of Shetou Village are making sure their plants will stay busy for as long as they can.