McDonald's — 15M disposable gloves supply

The challenge

In the spring of 2021 the global disposable-gloves market was overloaded with PPE orders. Free-market prices and lead times kept drifting, and some manufacturers had switched to medical nitrile and effectively vanished from the supplier pool. Against that backdrop, McDonald's needed a large batch of disposable VIYL gloves to equip its restaurants.

The team had to:

• locate a factory with active food-contact certification and free VIYL capacity;
• lock the material, thickness, sizing and packaging specification before production started;
• run independent QC and stop any defective product from reaching the bulk batch;
• prepare the export pack under regulations that were changing several times a quarter for PPE leaving China.

Our solution

MATE Group ran the project through its Chinese legal entity, Xinglu Import & Export Trade Co., Ltd, as a single end-to-end deal rather than a one-off purchase.

• Factory sourcing. From a short list of producers we picked a plant with verified food-contact certification and free VIYL lines.
• Samples before the batch. The client signed off material, thickness, sizing and packaging on physical samples before production kicked off — the same gate we use on other PPE projects.
• Quality control on site. Our China-side buyers inspected the goods at the factory warehouse prior to shipment: specification compliance, defect rate, correct labelling.
• Export paperwork. Despite the unstable Chinese customs requirements for PPE exports in 2021, the document pack was filed correctly first time — no border holds.
• Transparent logistics. The client saw every stage of the batch: purchase, intake, packing, dispatch. The same model has powered MATE Group operations since 2017.

The result

The 15,000,000-piece batch of disposable VIYL gloves was delivered in full and on the agreed schedule. The goods met the approved specification; no claims were raised against the batch.

For MATE Group, this project was part of a breakthrough year. With customs closed and logistics paralysed, 2021 was when the company opened up new markets — KN95 supplies to Germany, Belgium and Qatar, mask-production equipment for Russia, a container of white T-shirts to Nigeria. The McDonald's deal was one of the anchor projects of that period.