STAFF at an Oswestry distillery have swapped making alcoholic drinks for hand sanitiser during the coronavirus outbreak.

Henstone Distillery, part of Stonehouse Brewery, has been using the alcohol it has to make in demand effective handwash for hospitals and care homes in the area.

The distillery has halted production of alcoholic drinks for the time-being, and has been using the time spare to produce five-litre tubs of hand sanitiser, in accordance with a World Health Organisation (WHO) recipe.

Allison Parr of Stonehouse Brewery, says the process has not been easy, as the key ingredients have been hard to come by.

She said: “The primary ingredient in most effective hand sanitisers is alcohol, which obviously we have plenty of.

“We’ve been trying it for a couple of weeks – we say a number of distilleries in the US doing it, so we thought we should give it a go too.

“Most of them contain more than 60 per cent alcohol, and there is a World Health Organisation recipe for making it.

“We had some difficulty getting hold of some of the ingredients to start with because a lot of places had short supply, and we have had problems getting hold of bottles to put it in.

“What we’ve done now is filled up five-litre containers and we can distribute them to care homes, hospitals and other places that might need them.”

Allison said she hopes this is a way the staff at the distillery can do their bit to help fight the virus.

“It’s very important to be able to offer this to people,” she added.

“We’ve had to get around a lot of red tape to ensure we are actually legally allowed to do this, but HMRC changed the rules last week, so we are able to do it without paying any duty on the alcohol.

“As it stands, we’re waiting from orders now, and they’re ready to go then.

“We will continue making it for as long as we are able to.

“It’s an ideal opportunity for us to do something to help, especially as we’re not spending time making alcohol for drinking because everywhere is closed.”

She also praised the NHS staff for the work they are doing under difficult circumstances.

She said: “The work the NHS is doing is amazing – it goes without saying they’re the frontline to all this.

“They’re going to be pushed to the extreme and the work they are putting in is amazing.

“They are desperate for things like hand sanitiser and PPE, and it’s getting very difficult for people to get hold of what they need.

“Our hope is that we can primarily supply the NHS and then we can look at supplying other groups and charities locally in need of it.”