all would’ve needed to be rated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which would’ve delayed production by months. So Comfortex once again pivoted, getting its supplies to places such as the Center for Disability Services, FedEx and local emergency medical services instead. Precision Valve & Automation (PVA) Cohoes-based Precision Valve & Automation (PVA) has been producing automated dispensing and coating systems for nearly three decades, and as Frank Hart, managing director of sales and marketing at the company, tells CAPITAL REGION LIVING, that’s put them right in the supply chain for ventilators. That sent the company headlong into the ventilator production business, and at press time, PVA had just become the first nonmedical manufacturer in the world to secure FDA approval for its groundbreaking design. PVA’s got its hands in sanitizer, test kit dispenser and face shield production, too. Mohawk Fine Papers Inc. For nearly 90 years, Mohawk Fine Papers Inc. has been producing paper out of its Cohoes factory. And when the COVID-19 crisis hit, the company’s access to a wall-thick type of paper called Xanita Board, which it imports from South Africa, and innovation met face to face. What Mohawk ended up producing—without even having to use its own machinery—was a concept for temporary, private hospital rooms, with their walls and beds fashioned completely out of the paper. The rooms require zero tools to construct and can be assembled in 30 minutes. The boards are also thick enough to be used multiple times and even wiped down, disinfected and stored for later use. “This whole process has been pretty fast and furious,” says Thomas O’Connor III, Mohawk’s vice president of channel management. “From idea to design to manufacture, it was really [done] within a week. We are currently going to market with it.” Saratoga Courage Distillery Located in Greenfield Center just outside of Saratoga Springs, Saratoga Courage Distillery is best known for its Pick Six Vodka and moonshine. When the crisis hit, CEO Holly Shishik, who moonlights as a Rite Aid pharmacist, thought she could produce hand sanitizer. So, working off of the World Health Organization and FDA’s recipe, Shishik and her team got to work. The distillery ended up producing 130 one-gallon bottles of hand sanitizer, which it distributed to the Greenfield Fire Department; emergency squads in Corinth, Ballston Spa and Wilton; as well as the emergency room at Saratoga Hospital. GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries, which has a location in Malta, produces semiconductors called “wafers,” which store thousands of microchips on them. While it was making them long before the company was deemed “essential,” the wafers have become an integral part in the frontline fight against COVID-19. One client, whom the company could not reveal, uses a wafer in a smartphonebased system that allows medical workers to do mobile ultrasounds on COVID-19 patients’ lungs. And the wafers have even found their way into cutting-edge research technology. Says Laurie Kelly, GlobalFoundries’ vice president of global communications, “Some of our chips are being used in IBM’s supercomputers, which are being used right now to do a lot of heavy analytics and understanding more about the COVID-19 virus.”
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