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DuPont makes a load of their fabric for PPE here in Luxembourg. They’ve stepped up their production but the government has mandated that a certain portion of the completed items have to stay in country. They’ve been happy to comply but I think the inherent comment is that they won’t have local people going to work, risking infection to produce items that don’t have any ability to be used here or the rest of Europe as they end up on cargo planes to the US.
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Another tradgedy of timing in France is that they had a factory in Brittany capable of producing up to 200 million masks a year. A 50 year old company, business was booming by 2009 after the SARS and H1N1 outbreaks.
Bought by American global-hyper-mega-corp Honeywell in 2010.
(translated)
"Seven years and four workforce reduction plans later, Honeywell closed the Plaintel site in September 2018, outsourced the production of protective masks to Tunisia, and dismissed 38 employees. Icing on the cake, in November 2018, most of the machines were sent to the scrap yard. Management then justified the closure “to streamline our global operations and better serve [its] customers”.""The main factory for manufacturing hospital masks in France has been closed for profitability reasons, and no politician has raised a finger to oppose the closure of a strategic site for health security."
Edit: Sources:
https://reporterre.net/En-2018-on-pouvait-fabriquer-200-millions-de-masques-par-an-en-France
Philbythesea
Yes, agreed, the corruption starts at the sellers, but the corruption there exists already at all levels (for multiple historical and cultural reasons), and acts like this knowingly exploit that fact, and will just encourage it further.