Medway’s Copper Rivet Distillery wins major hand sanitiser contract!
Copper Rivet Distillery, the family owned gin, vodka and whisky producer based at Chatham’s Historic Dockyard in Kent, has won a contract to produce hand sanitiser for medical equipment manufacturer, Eschmann Technologies Ltd.
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 premium 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. The Eschmann hand sanitiser includes added oils for skin care – this is crucial for professionals (such as dentists) who need to use it regularly. Furthermore, the Eschmann hand sanitiser is BSEN 1276 and BSEN 1500 certified and kills 99.9% of bacteria and viruses.”
Eschmann Technologies will sell 60ml, 500ml and five litre bottles of the hand sanitiser. The hand sanitiser produced for the company meets World Health Organisation (WHO) standards by containing 70% alcohol. It also includes coconut oil to protect hands from damage that could be caused by long-term use of rougher products. As well as selling the hand sanitiser to their customers, the company is also issuing the hand sanitiser to their field service engineers and deploying bottles around their office.
George Kennedy, Commercial Director comments, “Supplying our customers with high quality products is of utmost importance to us. Russell Distillers Ltd has a long track record of creating leading ethanol based products with an emphasis on excellence and customer experience and we were delighted to find their hand sanitiser production capability – their philosophy and standards match ours which is why we are so pleased with this partnership”
Established in 1830, Eschmann is based in Lancing, West Sussex and has been manufacturing high quality hospital equipment and market-leading infection control solutions for over 180 years.
Copper Rivet Distillery was founded in 2016 by Stephen Russell and his brother, Matthew, and their father, Bob.