o essweek March 30, 2020N95
MASK:
PHOTOGRAPH
BY
JAMIE
CHUNG
FOR
BLOOMBERG
BUSINESSWEEK.
FACTORY:
SHANNON
MARVEL
additionalassemblylines.Themask
components are readily available
because most of them, including
the filters, are made in-house. The
lines that assemble respirator cups,
filters, nose clips, and nose foam are
loaded with robots and other auto-
mation, while humans tend to pack-
aging and other tasks that allow more
easilyforsocialdistancing.Nowork-
ershaveyetgottensick,Rehdersays.
Athome,hiswifehasbeenpatient—
though,hejokes,“whenwetrytosit
downandwatcha movieandI getsixcallsinbetween,I get
acouple of looks.”Tamer Abdouni is a Beirut-based consultant who
facilitates the trade of, among other things, 3M respirators.
Usually he can buy them for $1.25 apiece and resell them for a
dime more. Lately the best purchase price he can get is $7.25.
Even if he were willing to buy at that price, he says, selling
respirators at multiples of his usual price during a pandemic
would tarnish his reputation.
“3M makes the Rolls-Royce of masks,” Abdouni says.
“People are holding stocks of masks and waiting for them
to increase in value before selling them off. This is becom-
ing very unethical. This is a war on coronavirus, and I don’t
want to be a warlord.”
In the U.S., too, prices for personal protective equipment
are being driven up in what has become a grim marketplace.
It’s unclear whether some distributors are withholding masks
as demand rises, but states are clamoring for every mask they
can scrounge and must compete against one another to secure
them. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on March 23
that masks the state usually buys for 85¢ now cost $7.
3M says it hasn’t raised respirator prices and can’t controlwhat happens after it sells its products to distributors. Roman
wrote to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on March 24 to
offer 3M’s help in rooting out medical device counterfeiting
and price gouging.
With demand soaring, 3M’s respirator sales could nearly
double this year, to $600 million, according to William Blair
& Co. analyst Nicholas Heymann. The company, despite its
$32 billion in annual revenue, could use the boost. 3M has
frustrated Wall Street in the past year with reduced earnings
forecasts, sharp downturns in key markets, and thousands
of layoffs. The coronavirus outbreak remains a threat to the
broader supply chain and economy, and it could ultimately
“make it more difficult for 3M to serve customers,” the com-
pany acknowledged in a regulatory filing on March 25. It also
faces potential liabilities of as much as $10 billion, some ana-
lysts estimate, over its past use of PFAS, a group of chemicals
that shows some associations with cancer. 3M’s shares fell last
year even as the broader markets were advancing.
In Aberdeen, Rehder has more pressing things to worry
about. “I just think,” he says, “as we’ve continued to see
things spread across the world, it’s put more responsibility
on us to make sure that every day and every minute we’re
making every mask we can.” <BW> �With Riley Griffin“ asically, we were
at the point where
we needed to start
every machine
up. It happened
pretty much
instantaneously”
41▼ 3M’s factory
in Aberdeen