A Chinese firm that specialises in adult diapers will provide face masks to Europe and United Kingdom.
Daddybaby has just been certified by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and the EU to offer personal protective equipment (PPE).
It is one of many companies to have switched to medical supplies and equipment during the virus pandemic.
Daddybaby is one of the China’s best-selling nappy brands, becoming the first to be publicly-listed in 2015.
The company normally specialises in a very different line of products – including baby nappies, adult nappies and sanitary towels, but it has now modified six production lines, increasing its output to 1,100 mask pieces per minute, or 4.5 million a day.
Daddybaby first started making masks for Chinese citizens when the outbreak started in late January, and has since begun exporting them to other countries.
“Daddybaby has provided more than 30 million civilian masks to the people of China and donated over two million masks to people around the world,” it said.
Since the Chinese firm retooled its production lines it has been exporting more personal protective equipment (PPE) overseas.
Despite being a successful company, nappy sales are flat in China so this change “is an enormous opportunity for them to grow”, said Shanghai-based Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group.
In March, Louis Vuitton owner LVMH said would use its perfume production lines to start making hand sanitiser to protect people against the coronavirus outbreak.
And a handful of firms including Siemens, Airbus, Ford and a number of Formula 1 teams, worked with Penlon, a medical device maker, to adapt its ventilators so that they could be mass-produced at speed.