We started production after hearing about an Edinburgh distillery which had switched from making gin to help in the fight against the virus.
Opting for a World Health Organisation formulation which is a mixture of alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and glycerine and is 80% alcohol by volume.
Initially we thought this is straight forward – how wrong we were!
Firstly, it turned out the application to Customs and Excise to convert ethanol to denatured alcohol, and thus duty free, was complicated and rather lengthy.
Fortunately, on March 25 Customs & Excise emailed to say our application was no longer needed as we were a trade facility warehouse and were making gin within a bonded warehouse.
Finding consistent supplies of glycerine and hydrogen peroxide was also difficult, but nowhere near as difficult as finding bottles with spray tops
We have now managed to source appropriately sized bottles together with pouches that can be used to refill the them.
Then we discovered a problem with distribution as neither the Post Office nor DHL would carry hand sanitiser that is 80% abv.
The distillery’s solution was to create a local distribution network in upper Swaledale.
With the help of the Little White Bus which transports the boxes of hand sanitiser we are now able to extend this network to Richmond and perhaps beyond.
Where can I find it?
We have plenty of stock.
We cannot ship our sanitiser as it is 80% abv as such it is highly flammable so our carrier DHL will not take it nor the Post Office. The 80% abv is part of the WHO formulation and important for it being viricidal so we cannot change the formulation. Please check our stockists and filter on "Hand Sanitiser" we will update this as we grown our outlets but I am afraid it's likely stay rather local unless we make breakthrough with DHL or the Post Office.
If you are in the NHS / caring community we are working on chains of distribution so please get in touch (see bottom of page).
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