A WOMAN from near Chester who worked tirelessly during the pandemic to make protective face visors has been honoured.

Designer, Tracey Telford, who benefitted from a University of Chester business support programme, has been awarded a Medal of the British Empire (BEM).

She helped carry out the major face-visor printing operation at Thornton Science Park.

And now the team is expanding its efforts to help distribute face shields across New Mexico.

Mrs Telford, from Ashton Hayes, had been receiving help from the university’s Innovation to Commercialisation Project (I2C) to expand her business horizons.

She had created her own workshop and had brought a Thinklaser Lightblade Laser Cutting and Engraving machine after being introduced to the technology at the university when the pandemic struck.

As the country faced the crisis of a shortage of PPE, she quickly realised that her laser technology could be utilised to make medical face shields.

After researching design options for reusable and hygienic designs, the designer settled on an open-source design from Kitronik with a polypropylene headband and acetate visor.

Mrs Telford sourced some materials and adapted her laser machine to cut these materials and was soon producing 350 visors a day with the help of her husband Bill and sons, Scott and Sam.

At this point, things started to move much faster and she set up a funding site for Shields4Cheshire&Merseyside to help pay for the materials needed.

With requests for PPE flooding into the Facebook page from NHS and other healthcare workers, she called on help from staff at the university’s Energy Centre technical team, which was able to fine tune the laser cutting patterns to get the most from the materials and to add the university’s laser capability for production, effectively doubling capacity overnight.

The shields’ design then underwent successful trials at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport.

A small team of volunteers joined the campaign, phoning hospices and care homes across Cheshire and Merseyside to find out how many visors were needed to match to available production.

A Go-Fund Me page raised £5,400 over a number of months, as the charity expanded to cover materials which allowed visors to be donated to those most in need for free.

Mrs Telford and the team were overwhelmed with people’s kindness, including the generosity of Kath Doran, donating her factory and entire staff at Spectrum Packaging and Plastics in Stockport to come to the rescue.

By working from 6.30am each day and seven days a week, production quickly rose to 10,000 visors per day.

In just five weeks from start-up, Shields4Cheshire&Merseyside supplied 20,000 medical visors to NHS and front-line health workers free of charge and not for profit.

The BEM is awarded for ‘hands-on’ service to the local community, which could be a long-term charitable or voluntary activity, or innovative work of a relatively short duration of time that has made a significant difference.

Mrs Telford said: “What spurred us on was knowing what a huge difference it makes to protecting our frontline NHS and key workers while they saved lives.

"I have had nurses and carers alike quite emotional when they received the shields. Now we are distributing them across impoverished areas of New Mexico, including to the Tewa Native Indian women on the reservations with the help of Vee Werenko Keller, writer behind the movie Earthday Birthday, starring the late Christopher Reeves.

"I feel very proud to receive the award, and I share it wholeheartedly with the volunteers, the University, Mark Binks, and Spectrum Plastics in Stockport, Kath Doran".