By  JAMES A. LOYOLA San Miguel Corporation (SMC) has acquired 40,000 sets of protective gear from China to help augment existing supplies and better equip Filipino medical front liners in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm said this is the first batch of the ₱500 million worth of protective gear it plans to purchase. The gear was rushed to the Philippines via a Boeing-777 chartered from Philippine Airlines. SMC President and Chief Operating Officer Ramon S. Ang SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon S. Ang said the aircraft was filled “to the brim” with personal protective equipment (PPEs) sourced from suppliers in China, to be donated to various hospitals in Luzon where most COVID-19 cases are reported. The shipment consists of 40,000 hazmat suits and goggles seen to help boost local supply of medical grade PPEs. Local manufacturers are also work to ramp up production capacity. “We are very fortunate to have been able to buy this much PPEs. Globally, demand is so high. Many of the big countries want to buy them all. That is why when the opportunity to buy this much came, we grabbed it, and chartered a large aircraft to bring the supplies home,” Ang said. SMC earlier announced it was buying the first 10,000 PPEs to be made by local garments manufacturers under the Confederation of Wearable Exporters of the Philippines (CONWEP). The group was tapped by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Health (DoH) to reconfigure their operations to ramp up local production of PPEs. SMC plans to continue buying locally produced PPEs to donate to medical practitioners. The DTI and DOH are targeting a capacity of 10,000 PPE coveralls per day from members of CONWEP, which normally export garments to top global brands.