CV and mad panic behaviour

[LP]

I get it though why people dont as I was in Coles and they wanted $45 for a box of 50 x disposables, thats big money for someone struggling, for something that ends up in the bin..

Yep, crazy price gouging the Feds did stuff all about it.

The basic ones cost about 3c each to make, a machine knocks out about 10000 per hour, ~ 3 masks every second. They should/can be packaged and sold in bulk to end users for about 10c each and still make a tidy profit, that's a machine line earning $1000/hr and these things have been running 24x7 for nearly 6 months! For a single line at 65% duty cycle that's $2.85M/6mnths with a direct cost overhead of about $0.8M/6mnths. ( btw., The Feds sent in the army to offer free help/staffing to improve manufacturing productivity at local factories, the industry thinks they might be achieving or exceeding 85% duty cycle at an even lower unit cost. )

But the public buy them for about $1 a piece at best, most of that cash going to the middleman/retailer not the manufacturer, at the moment 100% of what we make locally is sold, so a single manufacturing line makes the middlemen/retailers about $25M in the same 6 Mnth period!

You can spray them with pure alcohol and then sterilise them in an oven, 85°C - 90°C for > 45mins, but that adds to the cost of the mask. It's only practical because the public are forced to pay a $1 each!