POOLER, Ga. — JCB in the United Kingdom is poised to re-start production at a factory closed as a result of the Coronavirus crisis in order to join the global effort to manufacture ventilators, the company announced today.

JCB received a direct appeal from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this month to help plug the national ventilator shortage and to help save lives of Coronavirus patients. Following the approach, JCB Chairman Lord Bamford promised to help in any way the company could and immediately mobilized a research and engineering team to examine potential ways to assist.

Now JCB is ready to restart production at a factory in the UK which has been closed for nearly 2 weeks as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. But instead of making cabs for JCB equipment, the plant is being mobilized to make special steel housings for a brand-new design of ventilator from Dyson. A minimum of 10,000 of the JCB housings are earmarked for manufacture once Dyson receives regulatory approval for its design.

The first prototypes of the housings have been delivered to Dyson after rolling off the production line at JCB’s $62 million Cab Systems factory in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, which Boris Johnson visited during the election campaign. The factory fell silent on March 18th along with 8 other JCB UK manufacturing plants after a fall in demand caused by the Coronavirus crisis. Mass production of the housings could start in a matter of days.

Today JCB Chairman Lord Bamford said: “When we were approached by the Prime Minister we were determined, as a British company, to help in any way we could. This project has gone from design to production in just a matter of days and I am delighted that we have been able to deploy the skills of our talented engineering, design and fabrication teams so quickly at a time of national crisis. This is also a global crisis, of course, and we will naturally help with the production of more housings if these ventilators are eventually required by other countries.”

JCB’s response to the call to action would see the return to work for around 50 UK employees affected by an extended company shutdown announced last week.