MonoSol Wins Indiana Innovation Award for Product that Helped Healthcare Workers Fighting COVID
MERRILLVILLE, Ind., October 16, 2020 – The Indiana Innovation Awards recognized MonoSol this week for its pandemic response efforts, including its quick and creative steps to increase production of the dissolvable laundry bags used to protect workers at hospitals and medical facilities.
Established in 2011, the Indiana Innovation Awards are the only broad-based innovation awards focused on Indiana. The awards seek to recognize individuals and organizations who are successfully leading the innovation charge in the state. The awards celebration culminates at the Day of Innovation each fall at Butler University, but was held virtually this year amid the ongoing pandemic.
Best known for its biodegradable and water-soluble films used to make laundry and dishwashing detergent packets or “pods,” MonoSol’s dissolvable laundry bags take advantage of the same unique water-soluble technology to protect healthcare and maintenance workers from infectious diseases by reducing contact with soiled linens. Instead of handling the linens, workers simply toss the entire sealed bag into a commercial washing machine where it dissolves with hot water and agitation.
MonoSol has been producing the bags for 30 years, primarily from its facility in Hartlebury, United Kingdom, which counts the U.K. National Healthcare Service (NHS) as one of its biggest customers. At the onset of the pandemic, however, demand for bags quadrupled as medical facilities around the world scrambled to protect workers from the virus.
“To continue serving our U.S. and global customers outside the U.K. we needed to find a creative way to add capacity quickly,” said MonoSol CEO P. Scott Bening. “We were able to locate first generation equipment sitting idle at a third-party contract manufacturing partner. With a few phone calls and rapid deployment of engineering resources we restarted the production lines within a matter of weeks.”
“I am incredibly proud of the MonoSol team’s tremendous collaboration, creativity and speed to ensure hospitals wouldn’t go without an essential medical supply,” said Bening. “From the beginning of the pandemic our mission has been to help wherever we can and this is just one example among many of our people going above and beyond to do just that.”
About MonoSol
Founded in 1953, MonoSol is a division of Kuraray, one of the world’s leading specialty chemical companies, and is based in Merrillville, Indiana. Our business is helping people and the planet. With the power of water-soluble technology and our brilliant team of chemists, engineers and innovators, we create safer, simpler and more sustainable solutions for a range of industries. Our technology has already revolutionized product categories like detergents, healthcare and agriculture, and recent advancements enable us to tackle packaging waste issues. Although MonoSol has expanded across the globe, we take pride in maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit from our beginnings as a single facility in Northwest Indiana. We’ve never lost the heart of close-knit, nimble and inventive company. We believe in each other, what we do and our power to do good for the world.
Media Contact
Alexandra Runnion
MonoSol, LLC
phone: +1 219.762.3165 ext. 323
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