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Jax-Based VENUS Making, Donating Masks, Isolation-Gowns

A VENUS employee works on medical masks at the company's Beach Blvd. plant.
Venus Fashion
A VENUS employee works on medical masks at the company's Beach Blvd. plant.

A local manufacturer of swimwear is shifting manufacturing to add medical masks and hospital isolation-gowns to its product line.

VENUS has been making swimsuits at its Beach Boulevard plant in Jacksonville for more than 30 years, branching out into other clothing as well.

Venus swimwear and lingerie director Pam Kimball said masks are much easier to produce.

Related: Local, State, And National Coronavirus Coverage

“We were able to sew in our first week a little over a thousand masks. This week we’ll get up between 2500 and 2700 masks and that’s only using a portion of our workforce.”

Kimball said they donated those first 1,000 masks to a hospital in Patterson, N.J. Monday.

Credit Venus Fashion
VENUS' Beach Blvd. manufacturing facility is now making and donating medical masks and isolation-gowns to help supply the medical industry during the COVID-19 pandemic..

The company expects to start working on the isolation gowns tomorrow Wednesday.

UF Health will provide a special fabric while Venus donates all of the labor — from creating the pattern to the finished garment.

Contact reporter Cyd Hoskinson at choskinson@wjct.org, 904-358-6351 and on Twitter at @cydwjctnews.

Cyd Hoskinson began working at WJCT on Valentine’s Day 2011.