If you have a stainless steel sink in your kitchen, there's a good chance it was made at Franke Kindred in Midland.
The company has been manufacturing sinks for 55 years. The process has changed little in that time, but the company is looking to the future and for ways to boost sales in the United States.
Opening new markets means keeping jobs here and creating new ones. Franke currently employs more than 100 people.
A rather new innovation developed at the plant is a sink created specially for hospitals. It has no faucet, knobs or levers and is designed to reduce splashing. Behind the cover it has a built in ozonator.
“Infusing the water with ozone, it actually kills bacteria, both on the patients hands and the sinks surface, and most importantly in the drain,” says Shaun Desroches, VP of marketing for the Franke.
“It's been proven that most of the infections that are caused by bacteria in the hospitals start at the drain.”
The health care industry is now starting to adopt Franke's infection control technology. Collingwood General and Marine Hospital is one the first in Canada to install the new sinks as part of its emergency room modernization.
“When people wash their hands, sometimes there's an element of splashing up and the droplets get aerosolized that means they can spread back onto the hands from the drain and onto the sounding areas of the drain germs can spread that way and it has led to abut breaks in health care facilities,” Loretta Urban, a spokesperson for CGMH.
Back in Midland, Franke hopes are more hospitals across North America will follow Collingwood's lead.
“Especially when it comes to new builds where there could be several hundred units in there that's certainly big potential business for us.”
Infection control technologies are expected to be a major growth sector in the next five to 10 years and that bodes well for manufacturing jobs.
