From Wokingham to India: firm’s role in virus fight

WOKINGHAM-based medical supplies firm Intersurgical is flying out life-saving equipment to help India’s Covid crisis.

Managing director Charles Bellm said emergency air delivered orders were going to India, along with the company’s usual orders for that country.

“We are just sending things to India that they are asking for and we are happy to be in a position where we can supply what they need,” he said. “We are just doing what we would do for any country and is normal course of business these days.”

Intersurgical, with its head office at Molly Millars Lane, Wokingham, has a global network of subsidiary offices and distributors in 22 countries.

Mr Bellm said thousands of pieces of equipment were being shipped from Lithuania to India where Intersurgical has done business for 30 years.

The company makes the connections between patients and their ventilators, tubes, masks and filters.

As the pandemic was accelerating in Europe last year, Intersurgical faced “unprecedented” demand for products. “In all we managed to supply 61 million individual products to the market globally in the 14 weeks from March 16,” said Mr Bellm afterwards.

Mr Bellm has praised the firm’s 500-plus staff at Wokingham for their “superb work” at full throttle.

UK logistics manager Sally Day, 60, of Finchampstead, said at the time: “Work goes on seven days and five nights a week. They’re picking and packing orders to go to the NHS. The volume of output is unbelievable.

“We’ve got a very good team. They’ll do anything we ask, working to midnight or over the weekend,” she added. “Over a lifetime working here I’ve never seen anything like this. But staff of this company always step up.”

Another member of staff Luke Stacey,28, from Wokingham, said: “People are working together, it feels like a war effort.”