Today, DHSC thanked eBay, Royal Mail, Clipper, Unipart and Volo Commerce for their support as they announced one billion items of PPE have now been delivered through the PPE Portal.
DHSC worked with industry and the military with eBay stepping up to build the platform and Unipart offering customer service. Volo provided the data link to warehouses where Unipart pack PPE orders which are then delivered by Royal Mail.
We have now delivered one billion items of PPE through the PPE Portal ensuring:
✔️ frontline workers have the protection they need
✔️ PPE is as easy to access as doing an online shopThank you to all our partners @eBay_UK @RoyalMail @ClipperPlc @UnipartGroup & @VoloCommerce pic.twitter.com/vme7VrHTMe
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) January 13, 2021
“We’re very pleased that Volo Commerce is an integral part of helping meet the single most significant threat to our health, wellbeing and economic prosperity in modern times. 1 billion PPE items is an almost unfathomable amount, but since the daily order volume is well into 6-figures, you can imagine how quickly we got to that number, and how quickly we’ll get to the next billion and beyond that. We’re continuing to donate our time and technology to this vital project.
On a personal level, there’s obviously a good amount of pride and satisfaction that the Volo Origin platform has the robustness required to handle these enormous volumes. From the earliest days of Origin we built the system with comprehensiveness and resilience in mind. This has paid off for our private sector customers for a long time, and it’s great that the NHS, front line staff and ultimately the general public are benefitting too.”
– Chris Farrelly, Founder and CTO of Volo Commerce
Between March and May 2020 the UK Government signed deals with more than 100 new suppliers from around the world and ramped up domestic production to help meet demand for PPE. The PPE Portal forms part of the national effort to ensure critical PPE continues to be delivered to those on the frontline.
In mid-July, the portal had shipped over 18.5 million items to 21,000 healthcare providers. In September capacity increased to process and deliver up to 200 PPE items per week.
By the beginning of November the portal had shipped 325 million items of PPE to 40,000 providers. One month later the total number had reached 500 million, before breaching the 1 billion mark in early 2021.
One Response
But yet I still can’t put a message in my listing warning about delays due to covid, as one mention of the word covid triggers the “you’re clearly selling cures for covid” rule and the listing is barred.