3M has more N95 face-mask orders than it can handle

Maplewood, MN March 5: Dr. Deborah Birx, Ambassador and White House Coronavirus response coordinator held an 3M N95 mask. (Credit: Glen Stubbe—Star Tribune/Getty Images)

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Fortune 3M 3M 3M access that report here Alan Murray @alansmurray

CEO Mike Roman visited ’s offices yesterday. You may know as the maker of ubiquitous Post-it notes, but this 117-year-old company—it is #95 on the Fortune 500 list—sells $33 billion a year in a wide array of products to health care companies, car companies, technology companies and more. Based in St Paul, it is an innovation machine, spending $6 billion a year on R&D, and earning 30% of its revenue from products introduced in the last five years. Says Roman: “You are always within 10 feet of a product.” These days, the product getting the most attention is the N95 face mask, in hot demand because of the coronavirus. Roman says the company made a decision after the SARS breakout to create “surge” capacity for the masks, and has been able to almost double its production in recent months. But that’s still not enough. “We have more orders than we can handle,” he says. So the company has had to ration, giving top priority to health care providers. Roman is one of the growing list of CEOs who says using science to address climate change is one of his company’s core goals. “Sustainability is at the heart of ,” he says, and has been since at least 2011, when it put out its first sustainability report. (You can .) Roman says the demand for action from employees, customers and investors is steadily growing, and he expects the trend to continue. More news below. alan.murray@fortune.com