Zara’s Parent Company ‘Inditex’ To Help Manufacture Hospital Masks to Aid Coronavirus Relief Efforts

Wednesday March 18, 2020

On Wednesday (March 18) Inditex fashion group announced they will make its factories and logistics teams available to the Spanish government to produce hospital gowns and masks for patients and medical workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Inditex is based in Galicia in Spain, where citizens are on lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Italy is entering its fourth week of quarantine. Over 60 million people are living under a lockdown that grows tighter by the day. The stores that remain open are closing earlier, and police are patrolling in larger numbers to prevent Italian citizens from going outside without a valid reason. The number of novel coronavirus cases in Italy is rising at a rate of around 3,500 new cases or more per day, stretching hospital’s staff and resources to their limits. Many hospitals are having to scrape together supplies to treat patients.

According to a company statement in Vogue, Inditex will make a delivery at least once a week “of materials we purchase directly,” and that the company has already donated 10,000 protective face masks, and by the end of this week, expects to ship another 300,000 surgical masks.

The statement further reads that the company is still in the process of sourcing medical grade fabric for hospital gowns, and “investigating the possibility of switching some of our textile-manufacturing capacity over to the production of health materials, involving Inditex’s manufacturing experts to that end.”

Inditex joins other luxury houses, LVMH, Dior, Giorgio Armani and Versace are all making donations to help with COVID-19 relief efforts.