Major gloves factory closed after thousands of workers tested for COVID-19

The world’s largest rubber glove manufacturer said this week that orders would be delayed for weeks and some of its factories would shut down after testing positive for COVID-19.

“To minimize the impact on our customers, we are allocating sales orders to unaffected factories and, where possible, rescheduled delivery,” Top Glove Corp of Malaysia said in a statement.

According to the company, delivery can be delayed by up to four weeks and new orders may take longer.

As Reuters noted in his Report goodThe company’s shares have increased in value this year due to high demand for personal protective equipment. The company commands a quarter of the global latex gloves market.

Top Gloves operates 47 factories across Asia, of which 36 produce gloves. It first had to close 16 factories and reduce capacity to 12 others. The company, in its statement, did not say how many factories would be affected by the new order.

According to Malaysian Industrial Development Finance Research Analyst Ng Bei Shan, the production capacity of top gloves will be reduced by 50 percent.

According to the Association of Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers, Malaysia produces about two-thirds of all rubber gloves in the world. The other two major glove manufacturers, Hartlega Holdings and Supermax Corp, are not considered to have the ability to make up for the expected delays due to the closure of top gloves.

Klang, located west of Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, where the top glove factories and dormitories are located, has seen an increase in new cases, according to the country’s Ministry of Health.

To fight this cluster, the largest Malaysia has seen so far, the country put barbed wire in front of workers’ hostels and set up checkpoints with police and soldiers.