How Koch is Fighting COVID-19

Koch Industries, our companies, and our communities are standing together to help create certainty in these uncertain times. Here are some of the ways Koch is helping fight COVID-19.
Apr 9, 2020 12:00 PM ET

How Koch is Fighting COVID-19

Koch Industries

Koch Industries is offering support and guidance to 130,000 employees across the globe. Our top priority is the health, safety, and wellbeing of all Koch company employees, their families, and the communities in which we operate. We have dedicated teams and an internal company website—led by Koch’s Matador Security Company—that are committed to updating and providing virus-related information and resources to ensure employees have the best and most current knowledge available. We are following strict CDC guidelines, practicing social distancing, increasing sanitizing stations, and working with our custodial staff to make sure our facilities are cleaned and sanitized as appropriate. Our IT teams have streamlined remote work and are providing resources and tools to help employees working from home. We have also worked with insurance providers to extend benefits and ease costs associated with COVID testing.

In a USA Today opinion piece, Koch Industries Chairman and CEO Charles Koch and Stand Together CEO Brian Hooks remind us that openness and innovation have always been the American way. And they empower us to overcome the current challenge.

Flint Hills Resources

Flint Hills Resources refineries, pipelines and ethanol plants continue work to produce and deliver essential fuels the world needs to keep supply chains moving. Our teams are producing materials that are foundational to medical and healthcare equipment and services. We are producing the polypropylene that is being used to make critical components for COVID-19 testing kits as well as the packaging of cleaning products and even the plastic closures for hand sanitizers. We are producing the expandable polystyrene used by suppliers whose products are keeping perishable food and medicine safe for delivery all over the world. Our products are helping our customers respond to an unprecedented need for transporting COVID-19 test kits and therapies to healthcare professionals on the front lines of this battle.  

Georgia-Pacific

Georgia-Pacific is doing everything possible to meet consumer and customer demand, which has increased as much as 40 percent due to stay-at-home orders from state and local governments. We are ensuring that necessary items such as paper towels, bath tissue and hand sanitizer are available across the U.S. We are doing so quickly and effectively with employee safety and consumer confidence at the forefront. Georgia-Pacific also is helping the communities in which it operates. We have donated thousands of N95 facemasks to hospitals across Georgia, Alabama and Massachusetts, and provided critical materials to Georgia Tech for producing more than 5,000 face shields for frontline medical workers. Our boxes are enabling an increase in e-commerce and customer shipments, our fluff pulp is being used in hygienic and filtration products, and our paperboard is helping protect food, pharmaceuticals and other essential goods. Georgia-Pacific also has a long-standing relationship with the disaster relief agency Convoy of Hope, which is using our donated products to support those hit especially hard by COVID-19. 

Angel Soft and Quilted Northern brands shared new TV spots to help spread the word that bath tissue is still being made and shipped. 

See more on the Today Show and read in Forbes.

Learn more about Georgia-Pacific’s response here.

Guardian Industries

At Guardian Industries, we are focused on the health and safety of our employees and the communities in which we live and work around the world. At every opportunity, the team is actively supporting customers and other key constituents navigate the COVID-19 crisis. These efforts include securing hand sanitizer for a residential window manufacturer, providing virtual training and continuing education courses for architects and other preferred partners and helping companies challenged with supply chain issues. Our laboratories, offices and plants have combed inventories to provide much-needed donations to our local hospitals and health-care agencies.

i360

i360’s Peer-to-Peer SMS/texting tool is allowing non-profits, food banks, and local governments the ability to send important alerts and updates in response to COVID-19. Multiple municipalities across the country are using i360’s platform and it’s mobile phone database of US adults to communicate with citizens with latest information and steps needed to help flatten the curve.

Infor

Infor’s products are being used to monitor critical medical supply inventory, such as personal protective equipment; track interactions between patients, staff and equipment to reduce the spread of infection; track costs; and streamline supply chains. More than 85 percent of COVID-19 tests in the United States are being done at labs using Infor’s Cloverleaf healthcare IT platform to manage their data.  

INVISTA

INVISTA continues to produce important ingredients for basic materials that protect and improve people’s lives every day. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are focusing on helping the communities in which we operate. We are supporting local health care workers and first responders with donations of critical supplies such as gloves and face shields and materials for the production of hand sanitizer; as well as local agencies with equipment such as headsets for virtual conferencing.

John Zink Hamworthy Combustion

John Zink Hamworthy Combustion is transforming its 3D printing capabilities to help front-line medical workers in the communities in which it operates. The John Zink team is currently utilizing additive manufacturing and all of its 3D printers in its Tulsa, OK location to print head bands for face shields. The design is approved by the National Institutes of Health and headbands are being distributed to medical facilities in need of PPE.

Koch Ag & Energy Solutions

Koch Agronomic Services is producing enhanced efficiency fertilizers that allow farmers to produce more crops with less environmental impact to help maintain the global food supply. Likewise, Koch Fertilizer plants and terminals continue to produce nitrogen and supply other essential crop nutrients that are critical for crop development and the yields needed to feed the world. Additionally, Koch Fertilizer is supporting local communities like Dodge City, Kansas and Brandon, Manitoba by donating essential PPE like safety goggles and masks, and bottles for hand sanitizer production to local rural hospitals.

Molex and Phillips-Medisize (A Molex Company)

Molex and Phillips-Medisize are evaluating our manufacturing capabilities and working quickly to transform our production lines in order to meet the growing demand for life-saving medical devices like ventilators. Multiple Phillips-Medisize facilities have risen to the global COVID-19 challenge and are working on projects that assist customers in the production of critical medical supplies across the supply chain, including the manufacturing of  COVID-19 test kits, nebulizers, face masks, pens, and autoinjectors. As social distancing and working from home has become our new way of life, Molex’s connectivity products for data and telecommunications infrastructure and defense communications are essential to helping keep businesses operating and making sure the world stays connected. 

Stand Together

A crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a comprehensive approach with people from all walks of life contributing. Stand Together and Koch Industries are doing all we can to make a difference, including: partnering through #GiveTogetherNow to provide direct and immediate cash transfers for families, ramping up help for those who are jobless and in poverty through #HelptheHelpers, launching new tools through LearnEverywhere.org to help parents teach their kids at home, helping the private sector produce and deliver the staples people need and ensure workers are taken care of, and supporting activists working with state and federal officials to expand health care options and address sudden economic challenges.