INEOS, one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, has today announced plans to produce 1 million hand sanitisers per month to help with the European shortage.
The chemicals company plant to construct two purpose built factories for this, one in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham and another in Germany.
INEOS, who have sites in Grangemouth, Middlesborough and Newton Aycliffe (County Durham), have made the decision to construct the new UK plant at its existing County Durham site. The site in Newton Aycliffe is a compounding site and has existing expertise in the type of chemistry used.
INEOS is the leading European producer of the two key raw materials needed for sanitisers – isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and ethanol.
The company is already running these plants flat out and have been diverting more of this product to essential medical use and will now build two new factories to make hand sanitiser from them.
INEOS intends to produce both standard and the increasingly popular “pocket bottle” hand sanitisers and is already talking to retail outlets across Europe. Supplies to NHS hospitals will be free of charge for the period of the crisis with the public being able to purchase bottles through retailers.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of INEOS says,
“It is becoming increasingly clear that hand to mouth infection is a significant cause of Coronavirus contagion and INEOS is Europe’s largest manufacturer of the core ingredient of hand sanitiser. We will build two factories in the UK and Germany in 10 days to produce very substantial supplies.”
He added,
“INEOS is a company with enormous resources and manufacturing skills. If we can find other ways to help in the Coronavirus battle, we are absolutely committed to playing our part”
INEOS takes its corporate and social responsibilities extremely seriously, its products are essential to the production of essential healthcare products from rubber gloves, to PVC saline drips, syringes, ventilators, medical tubing. Its products purify the public drinking water. It produces raw materials for soap, acetone for aspirin and paracetamol, and its phenol is being used in pharmaceutical analysis essential in procedures necessary to find a vaccine.
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