7-Stars Hangar, a private company making efforts to meet the yearnings of the country’s aviation sector in the area of maintenance is using the opportunity created by the coronavirus pandemic to diversify into mass production of protective face masks.
With a target of 500 sewing machines, 500 tailors, leading aircraft maintenance facility in West and Central Africa, 7-Stars Global Hangar said it has already built up production capacity for 700,000 face masks per week.
Although, 7-Stars Hangar has been into upholstery for aircraft seats and aircraft seat covers, the company diversified into the production of face masks and hand sanitisers following the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking on the development, the Chief Executive Officer of 7-Stars Global Hangar, Isaac Balami, who disclosed the business model recently, said that, already over 700 tailors have applied for their job and that, the management was taking them through the interview process for selection.
After the interview process, Balami said 7-Stars Hangar will be looking at how they can take in 1,000 tailors for a 24-hour shift and give them jobs, aside personnel that are doing branding, packaging and logistics.
As a company involved in aircraft maintenance, Balami hinted that, with their upholstery department for aircraft seat and aircraft seat covers, most of these machines were already on ground before now.
This is just as he disclosed that the firm was at the verge of sealing a business deal in terms of aircraft seats with Arik Air when the pandemic broke out.
On the issue of local content in its personnel and manufacturing processes, Balami said “normally, even when the Americans came in, this hangar with our partners, Santos Aviation, we were the first in the entire West and Central Africa to start doing aircraft seats and seats covers which is huge for an entire region of this size.
“Before now, I have always been someone who believe in local content.When I was President of National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), at least in that 8 years, I am sure it is on paper that over 380 expatriates were sent out of this country and Nigerians took over their jobs and there was no incident or accident due to incompetence of Nigerians which was actually very good.We just needed that enabling environment and that opportunity”.
On the training of its staff, the CEO pointed out that 7-Stars Hangar was going to cover the entire West and Central African regions and that the firm was going to convert about 50-100 of those local tailors since they need to be trained as aircraft seat is actually different.
On the quality of the face masks to be produced, Balamisaid: “For us, what is more important above anything is that we are telling Nigerians that any nose mask that is coming out of this factory is 100 per cent safe because you can imagine buying in the traffic or somewhere else you are not even sure of the quality control process that produced it, you can mess a whole family up. In this case, that is not the case”.
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