US targets increased production of nitrile rubber gloves

Washington – The US department of defense (DOD), in coordination with the country’s department of health and human services (HHS), has awarded Showa Best Glove Inc. a $37.6-million (€31.6-million) contract to increase domestic production of nitrile rubber gloves.

The “industrial-base expansion effort will allow Showa to increase production capacity of nitrile gloves in Fayette, Alabama by 66.7 million gloves per month by June 2023,” DOD stated 17 June.

The move follows a DOD/HHS award of a $123.1-million contract to Blue Star NBR, LLC to increase production capacity for nitrile butadiene rubber raw material for the production of nitrile exam gloves.

The contract, said DOD, will allow Blue Star to increase production capacity of NBR at a new production facility in Virginia – increasing annual NBR production by 90 kilotonnes by August 2022.

DOD/HHS has also recently awarded a $13.1-million contract to Renco Corp. to enable it to increase production capacity of nitrile gloves in Colebrook, New Hampshire.

Renco, it noted will install two new high-speed dipping lines and six additional ‘standard indexing’ dip lines to increase nitrile glove production by 45.8 million gloves per month by July 2022.

Also, in May, a $56-million DOD/HHS contract went to Rhino Health Inc. to increase production capacity of nitrile gloves in Fort Worth, Texas, increasing its production capacity to 120 million units per month by November 2022.