Working with manufacturing partners in China to secure PPE for Canadian front-line workers

The pursuit of N95 respirators during the COVID-19 crisis has been the most high-profile government procurement challenge in history.

As the world continues to combat and adapt to living with COVID-19, the acquisition facemasks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a keystone challenge faced by governments around the world. In a truly, whole-of-nation effort, private enterprises have also been mobilized in this effort and this new paradigm of public-private partnership may prove to be one of the key learnings from this pandemic.

Since early March, travel bans, extended school holidays, home office and social distancing have become the new normal around much of the world. While we stay at home, healthcare workers continue to be at the frontlines of combatting COVID-19 and are continually exposed to potential infections from the virus. Essential to the safety and continued operations of our healthcare staff are sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE), both in quantity and quality. Faced with dramatically increased global demand and a high dependency on Chinese medical device manufacturing capacity, governments the world over are currently struggling with securing and procuring PPE, particularly N95 respirators.

The Government of Canada announced on March 30th, 2020 that, “…there is an unprecedented demand and urgent need for access to medical devices during the COVID-19 pandemic”. In response, the federal minister of health Patty Hajdu, revised medical device import regulations and has reached out to industry and external consultants to help procure PPE in China.

True North has been, and continues to be, one of the companies proudly assisting the Canadian federal and provincial governments through this crisis. As of writing, we have successfully procured 17 million masks for Canada with deliveries running from May until the end of July. 

 We were truly in the right place at the right time to respond to the government’s request for assistance. Two factors have been critical to our success in this crisis. First, our investor network with its deep connections to the highest levels of government as well as within the healthcare space enabled us to be at the table from Day-1 punching well above the clout our firm had grown in only its second year of operations. Second, one of our investments is ARXX, a Brazilian construction materials company with a developed upstream supply chain in China—it made a world of difference that we had relationships with procurement agents in China from well before the current crisis.

Going forward, it is clear that two main learnings will enable us to continue to support the Canadian federal and provincial governments. In the current crisis where days mean the difference between thousands of new infected and hundreds of deaths, speed is critical. By being lean, agile, and right-sized for this task, True North continues to be well positioned to support any request from federal and provincial governments, and continues to grow our procurement capabilities within China in order to ensure resiliency of supply in the face of volatile and competing global demand.

In recent days, quality control has become a topic of ever-increasing importance and will need to be improved in order to ensure the continual supply of quality PPE to our healthcare professionals. With reports of Canada rejecting millions of sub-par masks and the US CDC down-selecting Chinese medical device manufactures, the scrutiny is higher than ever, and the requirement to source quality PPE more difficult than ever. We are fortunate to report that our supplier is on the US CDC’s approved list yet we are continuing to build relationships with approved Chinese manufacturers in order to improve our supply chain’s resiliency.

As we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel in respect to physical isolation and travel restrictions, we have not reached the end of the pandemic nor the demand for N95 respirators and PPE. The last three months have demonstrated just how fragile global supply chains can be. Hopefully, the last three months will also remain as a testament to the potential and agility of public-private-partnerships in navigating global grand challenges.