A Dorset company showed its nimble-footedness by switching from the production of creative retail branding and point of sale marketing materials to personal protective equipment.

Mauveworx based on the Ferndown Industrial Estate is more used to partnerships with names like Monster, Tesco and Specsavers.

But early in the lockdown the firm decided to produce PPE and quickly developed a face shield design and got it certified.

Within a couple of weeks it was supplying scores of NHS trusts direct and health service in Scotland under the brand Medworx.

But despite help from MPs Chris Chope and Conor Burns, bosses found it hard to get in from of procurement officials in Whitehall.

Director, Toby Martin, said: "We started off relatively slowly with around 1,000 pieces of PPE a day but we quickly had everyone working on the project and we were soon at 40,000.

"We were incredibly agile and everyone here has been incredibly enthusiastic."

But he added: "It has been very frustrating not being able to get ourselves noticed by government.

"I think part of the problem was civil servants being drafted in from other departments without the specialist skills and knowledge of the procurement process."

Toby said: "I think we are one of the biggest firms in the UK for producing this kind of equipment, which is quite something when you look at the quick turnaround time in repurposing everything.

"At the beginning of lockdown at the end of March a lot of our friends and contact in the medical world were complaining they could not get PPE and we just decided to see what we could do.

"At first we just we were thinking locally but very quickly realised we could do this on a bigger, national scale if need be."

After some national TV publicity, many NHS trusts around the country started getting in touch, just as the crisis over PPE shortage really began to crank up.

Toby added: "Everything has been done in house with all our 130 staff on the project. This has made us realise that as well as working for other brands to their specifications, we can design and make our own products and take them to market.

"We've now put someone full time on developing more PPE ideas and other products. We would like to be noticed a bit more by government."