Distilleries are reorganizing parts of their facilities to manufacture hand sanitizer after a shortage amid the coronavirus outbreak drove prices for an ounce of product into the hundreds of dollars.
Chad Butters, the owner of Eight Oaks Farm Distillery in Pennsylvania, produced his first 20 bottles of hand sanitizer on Monday and is donating each to charitable groups in need, according to the Associated Press. Now that he has the right formula for the disinfectant, he aims to ramp up production and give out as many bottles as he can free of charge.
“We are in a national emergency,” Butters said. “What’s the right thing to do? The right thing to do is support this community by providing something that is in desperate need.”
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The distillery owner said he started adapting some of his equipment to make hand sanitizer using high-proof alcohol after he saw others attempting to capitalize off the coronavirus outbreak by selling the product for hundreds of dollars a bottle.
“We’ll flood the valley with hand sanitizer and drive that price right down,” Butters said.
Efforts by Butters’s business and other distilleries, such as Vermont’s Green Mountain Distillers and Smugglers’ Notch Distillery and North Carolina’s Durham Distillery, are backed by their industry trade group, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. The group is lobbying government agencies and lawmakers to ease regulations on the brewing industry as it strives to blunt the shortage of hand sanitizer caused by the global pandemic.
Many medical facilities and high-risk individuals have put out pleas for hand sanitizer and other medical products as the virus spreads. The supplies have been scarce because concern over the illness drove crowds of people to purchase the products in bulk. Others who were not able to purchase supplies before stores ran out have taken to stealing from hospitals.
