John Lewis reopens Lancashire textiles factory for NHS initiative

John Lewis is reopening its textiles factory Herbert Parkinson in Lancashire, to make protective gowns for the NHS.

Partners who usually sew bespoke blinds, curtains and pillows and duvets will this week begin making around 8,000 washable, clinical gowns for the Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust.

The retailer is also donating over 20,000 metres of cotton fabric from its haberdashery departments and distribution centres to For the Love of Scrubs and Scrubs Glorious Scrubs. This is expected to make around 6,000 scrubs.

“We’re all looking forward to re-opening our factory and threading our sewing machines again to play our part in helping the NHS. We expect to be able to produce around 2,000 gowns per week,” says Stuart McDonald, Head of Herbert Parkinson.

“The fabric we are donating for scrubs could have no better use than to keep people safe. Over the past few weeks we have already donated over 400 metres of fabric to groups making face masks and scrubs for their local hospitals, pharmacies, care homes and communities. They have told us that this has enabled them to make over 3,000 face mask linings and 75 sets of scrubs.”

The long way back

John Lewis is drawing up a blueprint for reopening its stores that it will be ready to activate within weeks.

Andrew Murphy, John Lewis Partnership's Executive Director of Operations who has led the strategy, has stressed that the company would wait for a signal from the government and health chiefs before triggering the operation.

He revealed that John Lewis is “modelling for scenarios where different sizes of shops are able to open at different points in time… That seems to us to be reasonably likely. Even in a scenario where we are theoretically able to open all our shops on the first day, we wouldn't do that. We would open in a minimum of three tranches.”