DOWNTON DISPATCHES — News

Over the last couple of months it has been wonderful to see how different sectors have come together for the greater good of both their communities and supporting the front line services. The Gin Foundry recently published the below on how distilleries around the country have stepped up to overcome a shortage of hand sanitiser.

Gin is proving to be the spirit of generosity

The switch from booze production to hand sanitiser solutions is in full swing in a majority of gin distilleries now. Gin maker’s fleet footed response to the crisis is turning heads too, billed as an example of how private businesses are rallying to help “the public” almost every night on British news channels. In a bizarre change of fate, such is the massive demand for alcohol solutions that a few distilleries are actually making more income from producing sanitiser now than they did as ginsmiths. Move over strawberries, rhubarb and raspberry – turns out ethanol is where the zeitgeist is…

Aside from handwash, there’s also a lot of distilleries doing fantastic things with less obvious media friendly headlines, like those sending teams to transport food to those in long term isolation and other indirect ways to be of service to their community. It seems that being generous in spirit, literally, has helped many gin makers stay in business with their teams active and on the payroll. In turn, this is helping keep the public’s love affair with their local gin makers firmly in the limelight.

It’s a beautiful sight but it’s not just the plucky micro-distillers rolling up their sleeves either, the multinationals have contributed some substantial help of their own. Pernod Ricard, Bacardi and William Grant have mass produced millions upon millions of bottles of sanitiser, while mid sized companies like Brewdog, Chase and others have been producing them by the tens of thousands as well.

For the bigger conglomorates, it hasn’t just stopped at the WHO approved formula either. Diageo pledged millions of pounds in aid to assist the now out of work trade with William Grant, Baccardi, Campari, and Pernod Ricard also doing the same. Beam, Brown Forman, Sazerac, Constelation, Zamora and a few others have all pledged in the hundreds of thousands and it’s fair to say that when it came too it, the big boys of gin are holding their hands up (presumably squeaky clean after all that gel) and are playing their part too.

Of course it’s been a little disappointing to hear the silence of some of the bigger names who have yet to roll out strategies on how they will emerge from this crisis having been a force for good. However, begrudging someone for surviving a storm the best they can because they didn’t also help others whilst doing so, seems a touch unfair to say the least.

Take Halewood, who are copping a fair amount of flack at the moment. Despite posting revenues up 26% to £335 million last June and producing millions of bottles of gin each year in the UK, they haven’t announced anything so far (or at least anything we could find having searched through all news, sites and feeds related to the half dozen gin distilleries they own, as well as their own press statements). Take the longer view however, and it’s just too early to tell the full story of any distillery group, as while many seem to be flourishing in the adversity there is an equal amount looking at the very real prospect of having to amputate everything they can simply to have a business on the other-side. It’s hard to tell which companies are going to be fine and who will be ravaged by the crisis. Either way, there’s no need for the hasty judging.

Moreover, not all companies have the ability to nimbly switch over to a different strategy in less than three weeks, with the likes of Greenall’s and Alcohols Ltd operating vast production operations that take a while to manoeuvre into something else. Once shifted the ‘solution’ will need to last not just a few weeks of hiatus but most likely the next four to six months and that’s before they even ensure they are doing so with full governmental compliance too, which is no easy feat at that scale…

It’s why in the positivity bubble that gin finds itself in (especially with the omnipresence of social media meaning that companies can’t simply do something, they must be seen to be doing something), those currently silent aren’t necessarily just sitting on their hands. From the big boys mentioned to the medium sized firms or the one-man-band operations, they may well be up to all sorts of brilliant activities but simply be too busy dealing with the carnage to be tagging it on Insta. If they aren’t, take a moment to appreciate that there are many producers facing some of the most brutal times of their business’ history, consuming everything they have to simply avoid bankruptcy or do right by their employees.

Yes, cheer loudly all of those who have been able to help and proactively contribute. Admire them, applaud them, champion them – but we should all take a moment and ease off the peer pressure for those who aren’t until the whole picture can be understood. The outlook for the hospitality industry is bleak right now and with so much yet to overcome a broad mindset of care, compassion and careful words should extend out to those merely ducking their heads as opposed to being very public about going the extra mile – be they a small producer or a giant firm so often seen broadcasting profit margins.

It’s also worth keeping the snide remarks offline about some companies doing the smallest things that may at first seem tokenistic due to their scale. Of course a little humility would go a long way, but it’s all coming from the right place so why begrudge it? Surely every shred of positive community driven energy helps. Besides, when did it all become a competition? That’s not even a rhetorical question anymore as there’s even light hearted talk of creating a sanitiser award category in a major Awards body going on in the Twittersphere… It may be tongue in cheek commentary from them at this stage, but it reflects just how easy it is to get lost in it all, to accuse, to brag. Isn’t the entire point of altruistic ideas and stepping into assist meant to be about the people being helped, not those doing it?

Just like every other industry, spirits will need to adapt over the months ahead but we hope that by finding this generosity of spirit those making gin will have faired better than most. Many a distillery will have kept its workers busy, content and proud to doing worthwhile endeavours. In doing so they have ensured they paid their employees and helped keep their families’ finances afloat when so many people now face stark realities. While immeasurable, they will have also built up huge amounts of good will for stepping into the breach when we all needed to rally together.

Hopefully when all returns to the new normal, whatever that is, those who did stand up to be counted, that gave with generosity of spirit and who paid it back (or forward) will reap the rewards of having done so. Most of all though, we just hope that many simply survive to be able to produce more fantastic booze on the other side, regardless of what they had to do (or not do) in order in order to bounce back.

BBC Article - by Stephanie Hegarty Population correspondent.

Shelves all over the world are empty, there's slim pickings online and the few suppliers that are selling are pricing at way over the odds. We're being told to wash our hands and use hand sanitiser - but a lot of people are struggling to find any.

If everyone in the world had one small bottle of sanitiser, we would need 385 million litres of the stuff.

Before coronavirus, the world produced less than a thousandth of that per year, about 300,000 litres, according market analysts Arizton Advisory and Intelligence.

That perhaps explains why there is now, as the pandemic sweeps the world, a problem getting hold of it.

On Amazon, if you try getting alcohol-based sanitiser - the type recommended by the World Health Organization - you'll find all of the usual brands are sold out.

Here in the UK, just a few days ago only one seller seemed to have any in stock. A 500ml bottle was priced at £30 ($35) - at least 10 times what it would have been in February. It's since been reduced to £20, but that is still about seven times pre-pandemic prices.

It's easy to accuse sellers like these of price-gouging and many reviews underneath the listing did just that. But the company selling it, Herts Tools, says it's not that simple.

"We've been getting an unfair bashing really," said the friendly man who answered the phone, Paul Stephenson.

"There are people out there saying we're taking the mickey, but I can assure you we're not.

"We're in a position where we're making enough profit margin on the hand sanitiser just to keep ourselves afloat."

The company usually sells and rents tools to the construction industry and it only started selling sanitiser because customers were requesting it.

But it has struggled to get hold of supplies and the cost is rising every day. "I can't even guarantee what I paid today I'm going to pay tomorrow," says Stephenson.

And that's because the price of the key ingredient - alcohol - has increased dramatically.

The sanitiser Herts Tools has been selling is made by a UK-based skincare products company called Zidac Laboratories. Its director, Jurica Weissbarth, has been fielding a lot of calls lately.

Zidac can make 150,000 bottles of hand sanitiser a day, but for the past two weeks the production line has been down. It hasn't been able to get ethanol, the alcohol it puts in its sanitiser, and which has to make up at least 60% for it to kill viruses (and bacteria) effectively.

Weissbarth used to pay around £700 ($800) for a tonne of ethanol - enough for 32,000 bottles of hand gel.

Last week a new supplier offered him a tonne for £10,000 - more than 10 times the ordinary price. He politely declined. But this week he was in celebratory mood after buying a batch on Tuesday for only three or four times more than usual.

The BBC called several distributors of industrial alcohol. One woman who answered the phone was close to tears; the company she worked for was closing down due to lack of stock.

Others were so busy that staff were overwhelmed and couldn't talk. One website said requests for orders had gone from 300 a day to more than 6,000. None were taking new orders.

If sanitisers aren't made from ethanol, they're made from isopropyl alcohol, also called IPA. There are a limited number of companies that produce these types of alcohol on an industrial scale. The biggest producers are in China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

In France the government has ordered all IPA made in the country to stay there. Other countries could easily follow suit.

"That is pretty extreme in Europe, where we are supposed to be all as one," says Steven Willekes from chemical supplier DutCH2 in the Netherlands.

He thinks any country that doesn't have its own supply of these alcohols could run out of sanitiser very soon.

And that explains why drinks companies such as Pernod Ricard, which makes Absolut Vodka, and Diageo, which makes Johnnie Walker whisky - and other smaller companies from London to New York, to Manila in the Philippines - are now providing alcohol to be used for making sanitiser, or are planning to make it themselves.

The Indian government has expressly asked the alcoholic drinks industry and the sugarcane industry to provide ethanol to hand sanitiser companies.

Chad Friese of the Chippawa Valley Ethanol Company in the US says there is enough alcohol out there to make an awful lot of sanitiser, it's just being used in different industries.

His factory is running at full capacity and is sending as much as possible to the sanitiser industry, but it has other commitments too.

"I think there's plenty of production it's just not going into the right channels right now. Somebody that's producing alcohol for Diageo or somebody like that, they have a commitment to send it to them and not to someone who is making hand sanitiser," he says. "It's just about getting the supply to the right people."

So when Britain's third-richest man promised to build hand sanitiser production plants in the UK, Germany and France within days, and to supply hospitals free of charge, it would have been logical to wonder where he would get the alcohol to fill his production lines.

Well, he shouldn't have too much of a problem. Sir Jim Ratcliffe owns Ineos, one of Europe's biggest manufacturers of both ethanol and IPA.