HELENA — When cases of coronavirus started to rise through out the area and personal protective equipment
was in high demand for hospitals and first responders, Nick Koval knew he had to do something.
“Just trying to flatten the curve and do what we can,” Koval said while speaking from his company’s
office in Helena, just over the Wood County line along U.S. 6.
Koval said that he talked to his friends in the manufacturing industry in the early hours of living with
the coronavirus about how to help.
“I think everybody wanted to do something, but nobody really knew how,” he said.
The 2008 Lakota High School graduate owns Premier Industrial Machine, a machine and fabrication shop.
Koval has been running his business since March 2015.
“This is something I put together just to try to bring us together to help and something we are capable
of doing,” he said.
Koval’s wife, Brittany, who previously worked in the health care industry before working with her
husband, was getting calls and text messages from former colleagues about the high demand for PPE.
Koval put his design knowledge to work and spent a day hatching out a plan to make masks with the tools
he had in his shop.
He decided he could use his water jet machine. The machine uses water pressure that could cut through the
polycarbonate material used to produce the face shields in higher quantity. Koval said it is faster than
a 3D printer, which is what most do-it-yourself designers are turning to.
“We knew time was the most important thing. As soon as we knew we could do it we went all in, worked the
weekends non stop trying to get them out there as fast as we could,” he said.
“The way we looked at it, everyday is just so precious, trying to get these out there.”
Koval and his crew pushed out 1,000 masks the first week.
“We just hammered them out and got them out there as fast as we could.”
The workers kept the machines running throughout the day and into the night.
“A lot of deliveries after hours, a lot of working after hours, three o’clock mornings, running the
machines. We think it made a difference and I think when you see the way people reacted who got them, it
would get you ready for the next day, it was rewarding,” Koval said.
In all — during that first week of non stop work — 500 masks went to ProMedica hospitals in Fremont,
Fostoria and Toledo. The company also sent 200 masks to Wood County Hospital and 100 to the Wood County
Health Department.
“That’s what it’s all about, helping each other out through this time and keeping each other running,”
Koval said.
He also donated 30 of the masks to Forbose Meat Locker in Pemberville.
“They are critical to us. We need our food, we need our meat. We want the people handling it to be as
safe as they can,” he said.
Koval, along with other companies that he regularly does business with, covered all expenses and labor
for the first 2,000 masks that were produced.
“I did start donating at first. Now we are at the point that we donated all the materials that were
donated to us and now what we are doing is building them at cost.”
Koval estimates that each masks cost about $10 to produce. He sourced enough material to keep building
them.
“I don’t know what the future has, this isn’t our main business, but at the same time, we are here to
help.”
