Episode #48: Why Nitrile Gloves Are a National Security Chokepoint (with Blue Star NBR CEO Scott Maier)
In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, Matt Horine speaks with Scott Maier, CEO of Virginia-based Blue Star NBR. Scott explains why the U.S. still imports about 99% of nitrile gloves and how pandemic shortages exposed major supply-chain risk. He outlines the capital, scale, and technical complexity required to reshore commodity glove production, and argues gloves are strategic for industries like semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, rare earths, magnets, and batteries. The discussion covers China’s expansion and vertical control of both glove output and raw materials, the need to treat PPE as national security infrastructure, and policy requirements such as tariffs, financing, and long-term buyer commitments (including proposed CMS reimbursement incentives for hospitals buying domestic PPE). Maier also describes workforce development efforts in southwest Virginia/Appalachia and Blue Star’s plans to complete a raw-material facility and begin building multiple glove plants.
Links
- Scott Maier on LinkedIn
- Scott Maier on X
- Blue Star NBR
- Navigating Trump 2.0
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
- Veryable Shop
Timestamps
- 00:00 Welcome to US Manufacturing Today + Introducing Scott Maier (Blue Star NBR)
- 01:21 Scott’s Path from Finance to Building Manufacturing Companies
- 02:34 The Wake-Up Call: America’s Medical Supply Vulnerability (Pre-Pandemic)
- 03:36 What Really Happened During the Pandemic Glove Shortages
- 04:55 What It Takes to Build Nitrile Glove Manufacturing in the U.S. (Scale & Capital)
- 06:12 Misconceptions: Why Glove Manufacturing Is Harder Than People Think
- 07:49 Beyond Healthcare: Gloves as a Strategic Input for Critical Industry
- 08:33 China’s Vertical Control of Gloves + Raw Materials (and Why It’s a Choke Point)
- 09:51 PPE as National Security Infrastructure & Economic Sovereignty
- 12:39 Policy Reality Check: Tariffs, Financing, and Buyer Commitments
- 14:13 Competing with Subsidized Imports: The ‘China Price’ and Raw-Input Advantage
- 19:46 Demand Signals & Incentives: CMS Reimbursements and Onshoring Momentum
- 21:21 Workforce & Site Selection: Training Pipelines in Southwest Virginia
- 24:20 Automation & the Next Wave of Reindustrialization (Textiles and Beyond)
- 26:07 Looking Ahead: What Success Looks Like + Risks, Optimism, and Advice
- 30:14 How to Help + What’s Next for Blue Star NBR (and Where to Follow Scott)
- 31:50 Wrap-Up, Thanks, and Where to Find More Resources
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to US Manufacturing Today, the podcast powered by Veryable where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing landscape policies and more.
Today's guest is Scott Maier, the CEO of Blue Star NBR, Virginia based manufacturer working to rebuild one of the most critical and overlooked segments of the US industrial base, domestic nitrile glove production. In the wake of the pandemic shortages and growing geopolitical risk, Scott has emerged as a leading voice on the national security implications of relying on foreign countries for essential medical supplies.
His work sits at the intersection of manufacturing policy and preparedness. Highlighting how deeply the healthcare supply chain is tied to America's industrial strength. Scott has written and spoken extensively about supply chain vulnerabilities, the realities of competing with foreign state backed producers, and the urgent need to restore domestic capability.
Today's conversation focuses on what it actually takes to rebuild this sector, [00:01:00] why it matters far beyond healthcare. And how medical manufacturing connects directly to the broader Reindustrialization movement happening across the us. Scott, welcome to US Manufacturing today.
Scott Maier: Pleasure to be here.
Matt Horine: We're excited to have you on today because I think this is a really critical, important issue. I followed you for some time on X. Now, you've written about it pretty extensively, so looking forward to bringing this to our audience. But first and foremost, can you start by sharing your background a little bit and what led you into manufacturing in the first place?
Scott Maier: Sure. So like to think of myself as a kind of former, you know, finance person, you know, rehabilitated myself into manufacturing and actually doing something that can, you know, create a lot of jobs and bring these critical industries back. Spent the first 15 years of my career in various, uh, venture capital and private equity funds.
The first seven were kind of in the funds. Then the next eight years was more working alongside them doing turnaround work. And that's where I really, you know, got a taste of the kind of, you know, operational roles and, you know, being able [00:02:00] to fix companies that weren't performing well and getting them back on track and being able to save jobs.
So really enjoy that aspect of it. And then in 2015. Started my first company, Bird Dog Distributors, which was a medical and surgical supply distribution company. We then purchased a plastics manufacturing company in 2016 that was focused on the medical items, kind of medical waste carts and dolly hampers for burn boxes.
Also do some like industrial dunnage bins. Started a cut and sew shop in 2020 and then our big project is bringing back these critical nitro gloves.
Matt Horine: Now that's a pretty, a pretty interesting path to back to it because maybe you've define the moment, or if you could define the moment, what made you realize that US had a such a serious vulnerability in medical supply production?
Scott Maier: It really started in 2015 when I started my company just realizing how much of these, you know, critical medical consumables we were importing. Then in 2019 I got, uh, linked with a group [00:03:00] that was trying to bring one of these glove manufacturing facilities back to the US and seeing, you know, at the time it was Malaysia was our largest supplier.
And you know, typically it was the forced labor issues with Malaysia where. Every quarter, one of the top 10 producers would get put in the penalty box by CPB. And you know, the buyers just had a heck of a time trying to, you know, have the balance of keeping inventory long supply chain and then, you know, hey, you know who is gonna be put in the penalty box this quarter for the forced labor practice issue.
Matt Horine: Right? And so, like, you know. During the pandemic, we all saw headlines about shortages. You know, from your vantage point, what was really going on behind the scenes with that?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I mean it was, you know, the US consumes one third of the world's glove production, so we've had these best practices, you know, kind of baked into.
Our standard operating procedures for a long time now. And then when the pandemic happened, you know, every other country in the world started to, you know, kind of [00:04:00] put these best practices in place as well. So you weren't kind of, you know, spreading germs. And again, you know, here in the United States, a doctor or nurse can't touch you without a glove on.
And in a pandemic environment, you know, the glove usage for the healthcare sector, you know, it, it basically tripled. So, you know, everyone kind of associates gloves with doctors and nurses, but typically it's only about 30% of our use here in the states. 50 to 60% goes to industrial. But you know, when you have a pandemic type environment, now all of a sudden the healthcare industry, you know, kind of triples and you know, goes from about 40 billion gloves a year to 120.
And then every other country in the world was also demanding a lot more gloves. And of course we had pretty much zero production here. So, you know, just couldn't make 'em.
Matt Horine: It probably highlighted one of the most critical supply chain shortages, or, you know, from our perspective, I think you and I share the same viewpoint, just a critical manufacturing shortages.
There's something really unique about your firm and your approach and you know, if you, [00:05:00] we could help our audience understand what does it actually take to stand up nitro glove manufacturing in the United States from a capital workforce and operational perspective.
Scott Maier: Yeah, and this is one of those industries where, you know, the product itself is considered a commodity, but.
Again, you know, with advanced manufacturing, we can make the commodity here at, you know, pretty much a cost competitive price against other nations except for China. You know, China is its own. You know, kind of island price-wise, and, you know, I think it's, Craig Tindale likes to say, you know, they have state capitalism, we have stateless capitalism, and it's, you know, the quote unquote China price is just unique.
But, you know, again, to make this, you know, 4 cent glove, it takes about a $200 million facility, which would, you know, output about three to 4 billion gloves a year. But again, to get the economies of scale with this, you know, you've really gotta have about, kind of eight to 10 billion units of production to.
You know, we hit that critical scale. And be able to compete with, you know, those large producers in the far east. So, [00:06:00] you know, again, for this simple item, you're looking at investment of almost, you know, a billion dollars to really, you know, get the size, scale and, you know, have enough quantities of gloves to really compete in the marketplace.
Matt Horine: Right. It's a, there's a lot of misconceptions about, you know, how easy or difficult it is to stand up this kind of manufacturing. We see it all across the manufacturing space talking about reindustrialization, but. What are some of the biggest misconceptions people had about bringing PPE manufacturing back on shore?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I think especially with gloves, it's a lot more complicated. So it's not just as simple as, oh, we buy a machine, we put in the, you know, NBR, which is a synthetic rubber, you know, hit the button that starts and you know, all of a sudden you're gonna spit out gloves. It's, you know, combination of art and science.
It's almost like, you know, setting up a new bakery. You've gotta figure out, you know, your humidity levels and you know, all these other weird factors that go to, you know, get a glove that's gonna meet the quality requirements for a, you know, a regulated medical device. And, you know, a lot of [00:07:00] the companies that were already producing gloves here were really focusing on specialty gloves, kind of thicker gloves for very specific applications.
Not the, you know, huge mass produced, you know, doing tens of thousands of gloves an hour type thing. So. It's a pretty steep learning curve. And again, like any other industry, you know, the nitro glove was invented in the United States, you know, in the late nineties, early two thousands, all the production moved overseas 'cause of the labor arbitrage.
And again, you just kinda lose that in, you know, institutional knowledge of how to do it.
Matt Horine: It really highlights the, the strategic risk overall in medical supply chain and people's just misconception that it's easy to bring back on shore and something that can just be at the snap of a finger. You said something pretty interesting there.
When people hear nitrile gloves, they may think of a commodity product. Turning a little bit to the industrial side, why is this actually such a strategic manufacturing capability?
Scott Maier: Yeah, and you know, again, most people associate it with the healthcare [00:08:00] industry, but again, that's only about 30% of where they're used.
It's, you know, kind of 50 to 60% is your industrial manufacturing. So. Think of your semiconductor factories, pharmaceutical APIs, you know, rare earths. You know, you can't process or refine rare earths without wearing nitrile gloves. You know, the new industrial magnets, same issue. You've gotta have gloves 'cause they have a lot of rare earths than them.
You know, your lithium battery production, you have to wear gloves. All of these critical industries that we're bringing back on shore. You know, all these factories cannot operate without the workers wearing gloves. And again, this is something that China, you know, realized was a strategic item. And from 2020 to 2022, they built a hundred billion units of glove manufacturing capacity.
And even more importantly, they actually overtook the raw material market. So making the synthetic rubber, the nitrile, edine, rubber, mbr, R as we call it. They made the other glove making nations dependent on them. So, you know, China's buying sanctioned oil. The main [00:09:00] components of MBR are Acry, nitrile and Budin, which is a, you know, C four oil and gas derivative.
So they have a huge pricing advantage when you're buying oil at, you know, 30 bucks a barrel. Now they get these, you know, they start producing gloves at a, you know, rock bottom price. All the other countries need to try and follow suit. The only way they can do that is by purchasing the raw material from China.
So now. Whether it's the finished glove or the raw material, China now controls, you know, 90% of our market. And you know, unfortunately we didn't really learn much during the pandemic. 'cause in 2020 we were importing 99% of our needs. And here we are, you know, six years later we're still importing 99% of our needs.
And China now controls 90% of it.
Matt Horine: It's a heavy concentration and kind of a weaponized vertical integration. If you think about it. There's really nowhere left to turn unless this becomes a high center of focus. And you know, from industrial policy perspective, from your perspective, should PPE be viewed as part of a national security infrastructure and, and how can we take steps [00:10:00] to do that?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I think it absolutely should be, again, especially as we're spending, you know, hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars to bring. You know, the semiconductor factories, these pharmaceutical factories back, I mean, again, it's China's kind of, you know, kind of unrestricted asymmetric warfare. It's like, hey, great.
Build a, you know, $200 billion chip fab and have fun running it when we don't send you clean room gloves. Oh, okay. You wanna make your own pharmaceuticals now? Great. Same issue. Have fun running it when we don't send you clean room glove. Oh, you're starting to figure out Rare earth. And, you know, you know, industrial magnets great.
Have fun when we don't send you industrial nitrile gloves. I mean, it's. China is very good about finding these, you know, kind of key strategic sectors and then just, you know, making themselves a, you know, almost monopoly and strategic choke point of it. So even if you do try and bring back your own production, they still have, you know, other levers within that, you know, critical vir, you know, supply chain vertical.
That they can, you know, turn off and your efforts. [00:11:00]
Matt Horine: Now they've, they've done that on a, on a number of fronts, and people often think that re industrializing means just standing something up or standing up a factory, and like you said, critical choke point on the, you know, the most basic tools and equipment that go into any factory, not just, you know, in this, in this vertical, but across the board.
I think one of the broader themes that we've seen and is a recurring theme on the show, you know, how does this conversation connect to broader concerns about supply chain resilience and sovereignty? We've seen the theme of economic sovereignty, you know, come up again and again and it seems like it's coming to a ramp and probably the top, the topic of the day, at least for 2026.
But do you see it connecting to that broader conversation?
Scott Maier: Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think you know what this administration, you know, realizes and is trying to rectify is. We can't defend our freedom if we can't make the tools needed, you know, to defend it. And again, I think when, you know, kind of DOW started looking at, you know, [00:12:00] their kind of supply chain and realizing that, you know, there's that, you know, chart that's kind of all, all there on x of, you know, kind of the primes and it goes down to your tier twos, but then all of a sudden you're tier three in tier four.
All has a critical China link somewhere in it. And again, I don't think anyone realized it was quite that bad, but in reality it is. And again, how do we, you know, tear ourselves away from this? So we have enough of an industrial base here in the United States that we're not reliant on China for any of these critical things.
Matt Horine: Right. I, you know, you've written extensively about the policy environment surrounding this, and particularly as it relates to economic sovereignty. Reindustrialization and medical manufacturing. Where do you think policy makers misunderstand the reality on the ground versus more of like the abstract academic theory?
Scott Maier: It all needs to be interconnected, so you basically have to have, you know, kind of policy to protect the domestic market. So that can be through your tariffs. You know, again, there's some uncertainty there with the IEEPA. I know there's a bunch of [00:13:00] 232 reviews going on, but again. Until investors see that, you know, there's some kind of certainty there.
They're a little bit shaky of really going all in on Reindustrialization, but you know, again, we've gotta tie all these things together. So you have to have your, you know, tariff protections. There's gotta be financing available for these companies, especially for the greenfield industries that just don't exist.
Right. You know, again, you know, for nitrile gloves, we had such a small base. There really wasn't, you know, a couple of large companies that, you know, we could have gone to and said, Hey, we really need you to expand production. So it was. Entrepreneurs like myself and a bunch of others that, you know, kind of stood up during the pandemic to try and do these complex projects.
And then it's the kind of commitment from the buyers to say, yeah, we are gonna support this resiliency. You know, especially on the medical side, you know, hospitals are extremely price sensitive and you know, again, when the prices went through the roof, they complained and then, you know, China came in and everything crashed down, which.
Made it impossible for the domestic producers to be viable. But you know, for the [00:14:00] hospitals, you know, having a, you know, penny or half penny difference is a big deal for them. But again, you know, there's a trade off, you know, do you want to have resiliency or do you wanna be dependent on the foreign supply?
And, you know, there's gotta be a balance there.
Matt Horine: The balance seems hard to strike, and I think tariffs have been an interesting tool or a lever that the administration has pulled, but it's also uncovered, you know, I think what the theme is, a lack of reciprocity, meaning, you know, there are these trade advantages that certain nations have, particularly when they're adversarial.
You know, how difficult is it for US manufacturers to compete against imported products, particularly when. If those products are subsidized and we've seen that, you know, in things that you don't even think of, like Canadian lumber, you know, that was something I had no idea was so heavily subsidized by the Canadian government and I've, you know, found out it essentially it killed a lot of the lumber industry in the United States.
But where do you see some of those? Those flashpoints.
Scott Maier: Yeah. And again, I think, you know, there really is no true free market in, you know, in the globalization. Right? I think, [00:15:00] you know, every country has specific industries that they, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to go all in on. And like I said, there was various subsidies there, right?
Like, you know, for Taiwan, there's nothing special in the soil in Taiwan that makes them a semiconductor manufacturing powerhouse. You know, the Taiwanese government decided, you know, this was the sector they were gonna go all in on, and that's what ended up happening. China was very strategic of just going up and down the vertical supply chain from mining to refining, to basic manufacturing, and then slowly worked their way up.
But again, having access to that vertical supply chain and having, you know, all of those raw inputs made on, you know. You know, the, the Chinese continent gives them a huge advantage. You know, I mean, advanced manufacturing, the labor arbitrage isn't the primary cost driver. You know, in today's manufacturing, you know, labor arbitrage with like a 50%, you know, kind of difference in wages might account for eight to 10% of a product's final price.
It's really the raw inputs that are driving things. Then again, talking to a lot of the [00:16:00] buyers you talked about, you know. Hitting that balance. You know, if the US market can come within that eight to 10%, you know, pricing difference, they'd rather have domestic to kind of cut out the complexity of that supply chain.
Matt Horine: Right. You said something really important there, and I think that's been highlighted by past guests on our part. The preference is generally 100% for local if it's viable. Right. And you know, that's, that's something that we've seen and, and people are trying to figure out this complex puzzle to make that the option, you know, as much as close to a hundred percent of the time as you can get you, you hit on something pretty interesting specifically about the healthcare market.
Because they operate on a pretty tight margin, on a pretty tight profitability margin. You know, tariffs on their own are doing what they're doing, but does domestic factor require longer term procurement commitments to really survive? And you said, you know, back in the pandemic timeframe you were looking at those types of commitments, but do you think that's where the market's heading?
Scott Maier: I think eventually it will. Again, I think this administration realizes that, especially for these Greenfield industries that. Again, to attract the private capital, [00:17:00] you've gotta have the offtake commitments. So I think we've seen that, especially in the rare earths where, you know, DOW and some of the other, you know, like the auto manufacturers all kind of come in and, you know, guarantee that they'll offtake what these domestic manufacturers are gonna produce.
You know, secretary Lutnick was in an event a couple weeks ago and mentioned that, you know, this whole thing started, you know, when the auto manufacturers came to the administration and they said, Hey. You know, we've got a major issue here. We need these industrial magnets. You know, it's about $20 of the cost of a vehicle, you know?
But now China is saying, we're not gonna sell 'em to you anymore. And this was, again, it was a commodity type item. They said, you know, China used to sell 'em by the bag full. You know, they sold 'em by the kilo. Then they decided to weaponize it and it was like, oh man, we can't make our, you know, $40,000 car 'cause we don't have this $20 max.
Matt Horine: Yeah. It's, it's a critical choke points are, are something else because you think about entire industries and, and the stories that we've heard over the past, you know, not only just recently because of tariffs, but for decades, you know, [00:18:00] textiles or auto manufacturing or. You know, whatever the case may be, um, they're hauled out, you know, first from the labor arbitrage standpoint and then from raw materials, which is certainly, seems like this applies in, in the medical space as well, which is actually, you know, the biggest employer in the country, or at least like the, the biggest growing sector.
So it's. It's a, it's a warning light for sure. Do you see parallels between what's happened in medical supply chain and what's happening in other industries like semiconductors, casting machine tools, some of those, those real industrial sectors?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I think it's starting again. Yeah. Secretary Lutnick mentioned, I think there's about 400 billion of kind of pharmaceutical factories and APIs and kms, the key starting materials, manufacturing facilities that are gonna be built in the United States.
So, you know, again, I think everyone's now realizing, you know. Having China control between 50 to 90% of our medical supply chain between PPE medical consumables and drugs, whether it's, you know, a finished drug or a, [00:19:00] you know, an API, which is a, you know, basically a wrong material for a pharmaceutical, again, is not a great place.
You know, like we said, I mean this is another sector and supply chain that China can weaponize and you know, again, what keeps me up at night is China can shut down our healthcare system in about 45 days if they say, yeah, we're just not gonna send this stuff anymore.
Matt Horine: That's really a terrifying prospect because I think there, that can happen on a lot of fronts, but healthcare are probably the most concerning out of all of 'em.
You, you hear about things in the consumer market. I think you probably recall right at the launch of Liberation Day and, and when terrorists were just kicking off, it was very consumer focused. When people were worried about where they were gonna get their Corona beer or avocados, you know, which was not necessarily serious industrial policy.
That's, that's consumer preference, not, you know, critical manufacturing. You know, talking more about Onshoring and some of the demand signals that you've seen, are organizations heading in the direction of prioritizing price over supply chain security? You work in a, you know, critical sector. Do you hear that conversation more [00:20:00] often?
Is that something that's trending or just, you know, something you define as needs to happen?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I think it definitely, it's trending. I think it needs to happen in other industries. Again, I think healthcare is one where, you know, I think the administration is, you know, working on some levers to kind of force the industry's hand.
There's a recent proposal by CMS, which is, you know, kind of controls Medicare or Medicaid. About having higher reimbursements for hospitals that purchase domestic PPE, and then having kind of a bonus payment if they hit a certain threshold. And so they're trying to figure out some incentives to, you know, again, prioritize the domestic industry and again, give some incentives to really support it in a meaningful way.
Not just, you know, eh, we'll buy some gloves here and there, or we'll buy a couple of masks here and there, but to have a, you know, decent chunk of their supply chain come from domestic sources. I think the other thing that'll happen too is as these. You know, kind of semiconductor and the pharmaceutical facilities come back, you know, they'll definitely prioritize a domestic product.
'cause you know, again, as the [00:21:00] total, you know, cost of, you know, their production, it's extremely minimal. So having a slightly higher glove, you know, coming from a US source is, you know, it's trivial versus, you know, having to contemplate, you know, we might have to shut down production because we can't get gloves.
Matt Horine: Right. You know, that's, that's a, a really interesting problem that just kind of keeps coming up. From the perspective of people are talking about investment, you know, they're investing or they're creating X amount of jobs, or they're doing things that will create, you know, excise facility from a square footage standpoint, or bring a certain amount of jobs to a certain place, which it's not necessarily the lever to pull anymore, but workforce is certainly a challenge.
It's been highlighted before. What role do workforce development and industrial skills play in rebuilding this capability? And you have your, your factory is located in, in Virginia and Appalachia would, would love to hear more about where you kind of site selected and where you're building.
Scott Maier: Yeah. And it's workforce is a huge component of any of these facilities.
And again, yeah, the. Kinda all the [00:22:00] projects we do, we try to bring to kind of the southwest Virginia area. Appalachia, it's old coal mining country, you know, indu, you know, kind of region that's just been devastated for decades. And again, whatever project we can we try to bring back there. We have great support from the Commonwealth and from the county, and what we've done is kind of partner with Virginia and the local community college.
So Virginia has something called the talent accelerator program, which you know, has budget from Virginia. So they'll give money to the community college to develop a, uh, training program specific for our factory. So basically any student can go through it free of cost to them and you know, they would have a guaranteed job at Blue Star once they complete it.
So I think there's a lot of that can be done on the local level where these facilities are coming up to work with, you know. Kind of the community college or the local, you know, trade college or even high schools, you know, get, let's get these shop classes back, right? Let's get kids working with their hands again and see, you know, what is possible in these new modern factories.
Right? You know, [00:23:00] this isn't the old factory where, you know, you go in and, you know, work in a super hot environment or something, and. Come out and you know, you've got, you know, grease everywhere. You know, these aren't those kind of facilities.
Matt Horine: It's taken its toll on the manufacturing sector. And people actually tend to think if you're trying to bring manufacturing back, you're trying to bring manufacturing back the way that it was.
And that's certainly not the case because everything moves forward. And I think we're probably in what we would call an industrializing society because as we had, I think we had a mutual friend who said really well, you know, anything that's. Post-industrial and re industrializing is actually pre-industrial because it's bringing the next wave.
You know, John Gardner from a manufacturer local had had written that. So it's, it's a really interesting thing because it does come up. People think that's exactly where you're going and it's not. And you know, one other thing to really highlight there is that all manufacturing is local. We talk about it from a national security standpoint.
It is, it's, it's super important, the investment in the policy makers. Local areas are not investing in that type of talent and workforce. [00:24:00] It's just not gonna happen, you know, being from that part of the country and it's just of interest. What, what are some of the. Implication that you've seen or, or is, is there a general trend heading back towards manufacturing, you know, outside of just those programs, but do you see that in the, the Carolinas where textiles were once, you know, the biggest employer or or parts of the country where manufacturing was so big before?
Scott Maier: Yeah, and I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are kind looking at all of these industries that went away. You've got Kai Rhodes, whose company avatar, you know, she's working with robotics to again, kind of bring this next wave of, you know, textile manufacturing back. You know, our little cut and sew shop in Maker Virginia, we do tactical nylon, so we make, you know, kind of plate carriers and magazine pouches, things like that.
Again, we've done a lot of automation to work with our, you know, kind of limited workforce to increase productivity. I mean, again, that's what advanced manufacturing is all about. You know, it's not really replacing workers. It's just increasing their output. You know, it's kind of, you know, giving them superpowers is how we view it.
It's like, Hey, all right, [00:25:00] you know, this little, you know, kind of clamp lets you do 50 pieces an hour versus, you know, 10 doing it the other way. And you know, that's what we focus on.
Matt Horine: No, the productivity increase is certainly something to behold. I think it actually was Kaya, who I follow on X, who had talked about, you know, the textile industry coming back in a way that, you know, what used to take 10 workers now takes one worker and they're basically making the same wage.
So you've restored the wage rate, but you've also done it in a way that increases productivity significantly. So that's a pretty exciting moment.
Scott Maier: And again, yeah, for textiles it's all about, you know, automating the, you know, kind of mundane tasks and then leaving the higher, you know, that's what we do at the, you know, our facility, you know, kind of the basic things we automate and then leave the, you know, kind of higher, you know, skilled things to the actual sewers.
'cause you know, something is just complex 'cause you know, it's three dimensional and you can't really automate them. Again, if we can get a solution that gets us, you know, 50, 60, 70% there and then that last half, or you know, 30% [00:26:00] is done by the worker, you know, again, it's a huge productivity gain and that's what allows us to bring this manufacturing back.
Matt Horine: Yeah, really great point. And you know, this is the part of the podcast where we kind of ask you to look into the future, you know, that is the future, increasing that productivity and, and bringing that, that back. It's all part of this bigger puzzle. But if you were to look five to 10 years down the road, what does success look like?
For domestic medical manufacturing,
Scott Maier: what was originally envisioned was having a kind of 25% to 35% safety valve of all our products manufactured locally, domestically here in the us. You know, that way again, if there are, you know, is another supply chain hiccup, you know, we're not, you know, out of a product, right?
We have enough, you know, kind of domestic manufacturing to kinda let us limp along while we then decide, okay, do we expand our domestic production or do we think things will, you know, settle down and go back to normal? We just never wanna be at the situation where we're dependent on one region or one nation for, you know, 90% of our needs.
I mean, Marco Rubio [00:27:00] mentioned that at the Munich conference, you know, just the other day he said, you know, it's absurd that. We would ever allow ourselves to become dependent for critical items, you know, on one, you know, one region or one nation.
Matt Horine: Right. No, that's kind of critical to civilizational survival or you know, your viewpoint on the way the world works.
You mentioned it a little earlier in the show, but what keeps you up at night when you think about the future of this sector
Scott Maier: again, that it, you know, it doesn't get the foothold and really be able to, you know, take off. Right. You know, I think the prime example is nitrile gloves, right? We went through a pandemic.
We saw what happened, we don't have 'em. We kind of made a half-hearted effort to try and reshore it, but it wasn't fully supported by, you know, this prior administration and, you know, I just don't wanna see that happen again where we have renewed interest, it starts to gain a little bit of traction, but then at Peter's out.
But again, I think, you know, I think this new adminis, you know, the Trump administration is. Committed to really making sure that we end all these, you know, dependencies on these [00:28:00] critical products.
Matt Horine: You know, on the, on the reverse side of that, you know, you're an entrepreneur, you're a pretty generally optimistic guy, and you've identified a, a critical, you know, threshold that we need to surpass here.
What gives you the most optimism about the environment right now?
Scott Maier: I think just the way it's trending, I think, you know, as more, you know, again, you know, manufacturing leads to more manufacturing. So I think if we, you know, we have more semiconductor facilities, more pharmaceutical facilities coming back, that increases demand.
And again, I think once our, you know, glove industry really starts to hit that economies of scale, then the healthcare market I think will come. 'cause we'll be able to have, you know, a much more competitive price than we do now. And again, I think, you know, then they'll kind of scale and say, all right, yeah, we're gonna dedicate.
You know, 30, 40, maybe even 50% of our supply chain to make sure it's resilient.
Matt Horine: You know, because you're in the space and you've stood up this facility and, and this business. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs or operators who are thinking about entering the space for critical manufacturing in the United States?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I would say, you know, definitely get some operating [00:29:00] experience, you know, depending where you currently are working, you know, definitely, you know, go to a manufacturing facility, you know, hop on a production line. Work with an engineer, you know, work on that machine tool, you know, kind of get to know those people on the floor.
'cause you know, that's the whole, you know, heart and soul of your operation there. And, you know, really get a feel for what that's like. You know, I think any successful manufacturing company, you know, those workers are the key to it. And you know, you've gotta be able to, you know, work with them, understand, you know, what they need.
You know, program we did at, you know, my company and the plastic manufacturing is. Every other Friday, the employees get, you know, basically a half day to take any process that they don't like doing and figuring out a better way to do it. And they've come up with some, you know, just really innovative solutions to things.
Matt Horine: And that's a testament to the spirit of manufacturing. Sometimes the answer is sitting right in front of you when you're trying to, you know, re solve, you know, reinvent the wheel in some cases, literally. And, you know, the people who are on the shop floor every day usually come up with that innovation. So it's really good perspective to [00:30:00] have.
Scott Maier: I mean, yeah, basically, yeah. You've gotta view your r and d not as an expense, but as an investment in future productivity.
Matt Horine: You know, we highlighted it, I think you wrote a great piece in the Journal of Political Risk recently on, you know, what you're doing. What message would you want policy makers and the public to understand about why rebuilding this capacity matters and what they can do to help you on your mission?
Scott Maier: Yeah, I think, you know, again, you know, try and support the local manufacturers as much as you can. You know, support buying from, you know, domestic manufacturers and on the policy side. Again, it's gotta be this holistic approach. Right? You know, I think, you know, we talk about industrial policy or industrial strategy as we like to call it.
And again, we've gotta have all these pieces kind of working at the same time. We can't just say, oh, we're just gonna do terrorists, but then not look at, you know, financing solutions or say, well, we're just gonna provide financing. But then not protect the domestic market once it's built. So, you know, it's a, it's a balancing act, but you know, they've all gotta go, you know, intertwined to make [00:31:00] sure it's gonna be successful for the long term.
Matt Horine: Yeah, absolutely. And what's next for Blue Star NBR and, and where can our listeners find out more about you?
Scott Maier: Yeah, we're, you know, again, we're working to kind of get our finishing funds to get the raw material facility completed and then start building the first of the six gloves, manufacturing facilities.
The website is just a placeholder. Um, it's BlueStar NBR. Then you know, most of my stuff is on X, which is under my name at Scott Middle initial T Maier, M-A-I-E-R. So pretty much talk about gloves all the time. But you know, that's my passion right now. And again, you know, they think the National Security Council said, you know, we're a strategic enabler for all of this manufacturing that's coming back.
So just wanna make sure that. You know, again, the rare earth people and the magnets and the pharmaceuticals all have the required gloves. They need to, you know, make these other critical items.
Matt Horine: Scott, thank you very much for coming on. I learned a ton about this today, and you know how critical this is to it.
And if you're listening, Scott has an excellent follow on X, so be sure to look him up and we'll be [00:32:00] sure to link it into the comments. But thank you for coming on again today.
Scott Maier: Yeah no, appreciate it.
Matt Horine: To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.