A distillery, better known for its gin, vodka and whisky, has secured a contract to provider hand sanitiser.

The family-owned Copper Rivet Distillery , based at Chatham’s Historic Dockyard, son the contract with medical equipment manufacturer, Eschmann Technologies Ltd, based in West Sussex.

Led by its master distiller, Abhi Banik, the distillery began producing hand sanitiser back in April and has so far filled more than 250,000 bottles.

Its initial supplies were produced for use by police services across London, Kent and Essex as well as key workers in care homes, schools and local councils.

To keep up with demand, Copper Rivet formed partnerships with brewers Carlsberg and Shepherd Neame to distil their strong base beers into hand sanitiser. They have continued to produce hand sanitiser for the public alongside the range of spirits.

Stephen Russell, commercial director of Russell Distillers Limited and co-founder of Copper Rivet, said: “As a multidisciplinary distillery, the pandemic gave us an opportunity to diversify our product range quite radically into hand sanitiser and we felt that, once the initial panic was over, we’d need to concentrate on specialist markets for whom quality is critical.

"Eschmann is a leader and quality focused player in their market, so this is ­­a perfect match for us."

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