HURON COUNTY — The Michigan Economic Develop Corporation (MEDC) announced on Tuesday that a downstate company has received just under $170,000 in collateral support for retooling its facility and purchasing new machinery to expand production of personal protection equipment critical to healthcare in the COVID-19 outbreak.

The company, National Filters, located in Harbor Beach, manufactures hydraulic filter cartridges, compressor oil and air filters, fuel filters, dust collection filters and more. Earlier this year, National Filters completed a 20,000-square-foot expansion at its existing facility.

The added equipment will allow the facility to increase its surgical mask production from 250 per day to 7,200 masks per hour. They will also begin producing N95 respirators at the rate of 2,000 per hour, and it’s management is in discussion with medical facilities in the Thumb and across Michigan for distribution of the equipment, once production is underway.

The support is administered by the Business Acceleration Fund (BAF) through the Small Business Development Center (SBDC).

Director of Technology, Commercialization and Growth, with the SBDC, Phil Tepley, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the priority for the PPE will be smaller healthcare providers.

“The PPE equipment will help out smaller assisted living groups that don’t have easy access to larger distribution networks,” Tepley said. “The masks are important. And it’s not just hospital employees who need the masks, so if some of our companies can help with that type of stuff, it frees up masks for the hospitals and the ‘big guys.'”

General Motors, for example, has a contract to manufacture 30,000 ventilators, Tepley said.

“What we’re talking about are very small companies,” he said, “so, what I imagine will be a better fit for the Business Acceleration Fund is, for instance, a small group that’s getting together to figure out how to get masks out to smaller customers, like independent assisted living facilities, as opposed to hospital chains or big hospitals.”

The SBDC, Tepley said, is focusing on the micro level.