New medical mask maker Paragon has million-unit-a-week capacity

Paragon Health is a new enterprise established by the Tierney family, who have repurposed and expanded their Seating Matters Ltd. medical device factory in Ballykelly, to manufacture Type IIR disposable medical masks.

The company, which had already been designing aerosol boxes and rapid deployment beds in response to the global crisis coronavirus crisis, took the decision to innovate having seen the huge need for high quality medical masks.

“In today’s environment, our health service, transportation, retail and hospitality sectors cannot continue to function based on importing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) from abroad.

“We saw the need for high quality medical masks and so we established one of the largest medical mask manufacturing operations in the UK to supply our health care workers, the public, tourists and travellers,” said Martin Tierney, one of the directors.

In order to re-tool for the manufacture of the medical masks, the company has invested a six figure sum to build a clean-room, manufacturing space, sterilisation facility and decontamination chamber.

Twenty-five jobs have been created in the construction phase with many, many jobs to be created in the manufacturing and export of these products.

The Paragon Type IIR disposable, medical masks are made using a local supply base to ensure stable supply lines with short lead times to health care, manufacturing, hospitality and transportation customers.

The product is fluid resistant, latex free and has 98 per cent bacterial filtration efficiency.

Mr. Tierney said: “With a capacity in excess of 1,000,000 masks per week, we have the ability to serve local demands and to export these items around the world.”

Paragon Health is a subsidiary of Seating Matters, which was originally established 12 years ago by Martina Tierney, an occupational therapist who had identified a global demand for therapeutic chairs.

During the COVID-19 health emergency the company teamed up with medical experts and designers to create vital box shields to protect health care workers while they were ventilating patients.

The company started the new lines of protective health service equipment while carrying on production of the therapeutic chairs that have made its name at its plant on the quiet Carnamuff Road near Glack.

The Paragon Health is another innovation and Mr. Tierney is confident the new company is poised to play a key role in helping people get back to work safely and ensure there is an adequate supply of PPE for future waves of COVID-19.

The company is a contracted supplier to the NHS, HSE and many governments, health care facilities and medical device suppliers world wide.

In addition to high quality Type IIR disposable, medical masks, Paragon also offers custom-branding of boxes on larger orders. This allows customers in health care, transportation, retail and hospitality to have custom safety messages or branding for their customers.

In the EU, medical device manufacturers must comply with Medical Device Regulation 2017/745 (MDR) which is a stringent set of regulations concerning risk assessment, process documentation, record-keeping, standards of design and manufacturing processes. These regulations are designed to protect patients and health care workers.

According to Paragon there have unfortunately been ‘lots of sub-standard PPE provided onto the market by those with no prior experience in this field’.

“As a long-standing medical device manufacturing group of companies, we have applied our knowledge, skills and experience and adapted our processes to help manufacture high quality Type IIR surgical masks.

“These masks are manufactured in Northern Ireland, giving short lead times, guaranteed quality and a trusted service to health care workers,” the company states.

More information about Paragon, part of the Seating Matters group, is available at www.paragonhealth.eu/