When reports started surfacing in January of a mysterious coronavirus circulating in the Chinese city of Wuhan, I’m not sure any of us appreciated the scale of what was to come. The full toll in terms of lives lost and damage to the global economy will not be known for some time, but this has surely been the most globally significant and destructive event since the Second World War.

As nations, states, and cities have asked their citizens to stay home to slow the spread of the virus in order to save lives, essential workers have carried on – often at great personal risk to their own health and safety. Many of these workers, including healthcare professionals, emergency services, and food retail staff, have been widely noticed and appreciated.

Others, such as label and packaging producers, are perhaps not so visible to the public – but the food, medical and pharmaceutical products they depend on certainly are. The packaging industry is critical to modern life, helping to dramatically reduce food waste and protect products from contamination – and that has never been more apparent than it has been over the past few months.

With all the pressure label and packaging producers have come under recently – due to unprecedented demand on account of panic buying and stockpiling, production challenges due to social distancing requirements, staff shortages, and supply chain issues – seamless production and flawless quality control have never been more important. Meech International is proud to have played a vital part in supporting label and packaging producers through these challenging times by helping to counter the effects of static so that high-quality and contaminate-free production environments are consistently maintained.

Every company’s production challenges are different. Varying web speeds, substrate types, the climate, and cleanliness of the production environment all have an impact on which static control and web cleaning solution works best. Meech manufactures a vast range of products, and at a time when it has been very difficult or impossible to visit existing or prospective new customers to advise on the best solution for their needs, we have begun offering remote consultations to find solutions to problems that have sprung up, intensified or evolved during the lockdown period.

When not controlled, static can attract dust, dirt and any number of other assorted particles, causing machinery to become blocked or damaged, ultimately compromising the quality of the end product. Left unchecked, static can also present a serious health and safety risk. Aside from the obvious likelihood of unpleasant electric shocks, static charges can cause sparking, which can pose a significant fire risk. Under normal production conditions this is problematic enough, but at the present time – with an increased emphasis on product hygiene and rapidly fluctuating production demands – static is a problem packagers and convertors need to address more than ever before.

Unwanted static, and all the problems that go with it, is what we at Meech International worry about so that our customers don’t have to. Because at a time when the whole industry is facing unprecedented challenges, it is one less thing for those essential workers to worry about.

About the author: Matt Fyffe joined Meech Static Eliminators USA in 1994 and has subsequently been involved in all facets of the business. He originally joined the company in the role of inside technical sales. In the 25 years since then, he has been involved in such areas as production control, technical service, quality control, sales management, and operations management. Fyffe is also responsible for the product development, sales and technical support of all of Meech’s lines of static control and cleaning systems in North and Latin America.