The companies that helped France avoid a shortage of coronavirus-filtering face wear for daily use seek help unloading a surplus of 20 million masks.
The French praised the altruism of their prized textile and luxury goods companies when production facilities got diverted from churning out the latest fashions to making cloth masks designed to protect the general public from the coronavirus.
Yet within weeks, demand dried up for the domestically produced masks that sold for a few euros at supermarkets and pharmacies or were available in bulk for free distribution by businesses and local governments. Manufacturers and the government acknowledged that many suppliers and consumers still opted for cheaper disposable masks from Asia.“They were more readily available,” Guillaume Gibault, founder of trendy underwear brand Le Slip Francais , told French public radio service RFI.
Some textile companies complained that the French government was slow to validate their masks as effective in filtering out small particles, which slowed their ability to get to market before people were allowed to start emerging from their homes and needed masks in stores or on public transportation.
“In a few weeks, the French textile industry has managed to mobilize and redirect its productive apparatus on our territory in order to provide the French durable textile masks with guaranteed filtration in sufficient quantities,” Pannier-Runacher said. “This impressive effort is to be commended. It must now be long term and be given support.”The French Textile Industry Union was the first to sound the alarm in early June on this surplus.
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