Cape Town - Local soup kitchen, Mother Soup Project has created the first “Covid-safe” work environment with FAR UVC lights to keep the soup flowing and feed Cape Town’s most vulnerable.
This is to ensure an increased state of precaution, which was showcased at the project’s current base at the Woodstock Brewery in partnership with Lumenlabs and Great Commission United (GCU).
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the country’s restrictions prohibited the sale of alcohol, Woodstock Brewery owner Andre Viljoen said like many other businesses they found themselves unable to operate and soon realised that the large kettles used in the brewery could be re-purposed from brewing beer to making soup.
That is how the Mother Soup Project was born.
The project has since partnered with over 80 charity organisations that deliver their soup meals across the Cape Town metropolitan area to help those hit hardest by the pandemic.
However, Viljoen said like many other initiatives and businesses operating during the pandemic, the Mother Soup production facility experienced various disruptions due to the spread of Covid-19.
After volunteering at the project in his spare time and experiencing the labour and production disruptions first-hand, Sovereign Border Solutions managing director Michael Eads brought their Lumenlabs US product, the Lumenizer, to the brewery where they were able to install FAR UVC light fixtures and ensure soup production could continue with a heightened state of precaution.
“The technology kills 99.9% percent of all pathogens, including Covid-19, on surfaces and in the air,” said Eads.
GCU committee member Adam Kleinsmith said they decided to showcase the new technology to raise awareness about Mother Soup’s expanded production facility in Epping where meals would be prepared at a larger capacity while the brewery could get back to beer production.
“This represents potentially the very first application of FAR UVC technology in this manner not only in Africa but the World. Lumenlabs provided the same technology to the Chinese Olympic Team and the China delegation during the 2021 Summer Games in Tokyo,” said Eads.
He said 300 Lumenizer light fixtures, worth half a million rand, were donated to be used at the expanded Mother Soup Project production facility in Epping.