Sheffield businesses rally to provide aid for coronavirus-stricken Chinese cities

Tibor Killi, who runs cleaning products specialist T.L. Killi’s on Glossop Road, is providing hundreds of thousands of items of protective clothing at cost price, sacrificing the profits for his company in order to help people in need.

So far he has provided 3,000 pairs of protective goggles and 300,000 pairs of protective gloves that will enable hospitals in China to continue to treat patients infected by coronavirus.

Mr Killi is working with another Sheffield business, Natural Granite Limited, whose owner Yi Bo Chen is from the Fuzhou area of China where the virus has been spreading fast.

Along with his employee Tak Liu, Yi Bo Chen wanted to help provide for people in need, and called on Mr Killi to use his contacts as a supplier to source the desperately-needed items.

Mr Killi said: “When I first came over to England in 1956 as a Hungarian refugee escaping Soviet rule I was treated with so much kindness. I was only 14 and I had no parents and the help I was given is something I have appreciated ever since.

“Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity to help people I have gone out of my way to do so.

“I know Tak well and he came to me because he knew I would be able to get the things they needed using my accounts with suppliers which enable us to buy the amounts they need.

“Everything I buy, I show Tak the receipts and I just charge what I paid for them. I do not want to make a profit out of people in need.”

Tak Liu is organising the Sheffield-based effort to help people in China.

He said: “China is in a crisis at the moment. Some hospitals are having to close because they cannot get enough protective clothing for staff. They cannot operate without it.

“We need more people like Mr Killis who are warm hearted and step above to help when the world has a crisis like this.”