Rebels chairman Paul Docherty is at the forefront of tackling the coronavirus pandemic but not in the way you might think.
Docherty part-owns 3D printing business 3DMediTech, which is an industrial producer of medical equipment.
In the past, 3DMediTech has mainly manufactured children's orthopaedics and dental devices but with the growing, and immediate demand for medical supplies, the
Initially the company was producing parts for hazmat suits, goggles and trialling a new COVID-19 testing swab.
With concerns around the pandemic growing, 3DMediTech has shifted once more to the production of ventilator parts, pending the approval of the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Docherty said the company had the capability to produce a range of equipment that hospitals and the medical industry would need in the coming months and beyond.
"We've provided some masks, some goggles and some splash shields to hospitals that have been in need in the very early stages and then we said to, we started off doing the basic hazmat suit and working with that," he said.
"We were designing, there were a couple of other companies designing really just to solve an immediate problem.
"We didn't end up using those things - prototyped them, then we were asked to provide some splash shields and eye goggles just as a favour to one of our partners in one of the hospitals here in Melbourne but it's not usually cost efficient for us to be doing that.
"Then we got asked to participate in the development of a medical swab, an open source medical swab design, which we were asked to look at and to change and to make more effective.
"We've been working quite closely with the Doherty Institute...to ensure we get the clinical testing right and the trials all done for that."
Docherty said the company could more than double its staff, currently a group of roughly 40 workers, with the shift in production.
"During this process we'll at least double our workforce," he said.
"This is doubling them into advanced manufacturing which is, if you're talking about future industries and people can say I've now got a job in advanced manufacturing.
"One you're in a safe space, two - we're saying to the Australian community and the rest of the world, we're going to produce jobs here in an industry that's growing and I just think that's good messaging and it's good for our people.
"Our economies, there'll be people that have lost their jobs, here's an opportunity to create them."
Docherty estimated that they could be producing up to a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment being needed.
"Most of those items that I talked about are going to be in the hundreds of thousands or the millions, just talking about requirement for what's going to happen nationally," he said.
"Again, we would be a component of that supply chain.
"It's very difficult for me to say (an exact number) because we could be up to 25 per cent of that supply chain.
"We're never going to be all of that supply chain.
"It's really, in percentages, it's probably the easiest way to do it because you could say to me, 'How do you scale up?' I could tomorrow put six new machines in or I could put 12 machines in or I could put 18 machines in.
"So, the capability or the ability to scale up, there are no limits to that but it's just really about which way the government looks at."
While the COVID-19 pandemic is widely expected to ease as the year goes on, Docherty said their view was also on ensuring the provision of equipment beyond that.
"I think when we look at that in a medical device sense, we say what we're rightly looking at now is how do we make sure there's enough stock and give confidence to the community that we can support anything that happens in the next 2-3 months," he said.
"And then it is, how does the medical community, rightly, how do we support them in the following three months of starting to stage out of this virus because in the end we're going to have to test more people.
"It's going to be important that we have all of the equipment to allow us to do that. It's not just putting a swab down your throat.
"It's got to have the person who's standing in front of you's got to have their PPE (Personal Protective Eqiupiment) on.
"It is all of those things about the faster, better we get at this and the more properly made certified devices we get into the community, the faster we can get out of it."
