Port Chilkoot Distillery is manufacturing hand sanitizer to be distributed free in Haines and Southeast as part of an effort to aid in prevention of the coronavirus spread.
“We’re about done our first batch,” co-owner Heather Shade Tuesday at the company’s Fort Seward plant. The product will be available in two-ounce and 12-ounce squirt bottles at grocery and liquor stores, where donations toward the cost of production will be accepted.
It also will be donated for circulation to groups and organizations helping individuals who are at high-risk of infection, to the Haines Borough and to post offices in Southeast Alaska.
Shade said her employees saw a news story of a similar effort by an Oregon distillery and jumped on the idea. As the distillery is closed to the public, the project also is keeping the company’s crew of six employees busy.
“It’s giving our whole crew a sense of purpose, to be able to make a contribution right now,” Shade said.
The federal Food and Drug Administration recently released guidelines to allow distilleries to create the product. Sanitizer is a mix of ethanol, glycerine, hydrogen peroxide and water. All the company needed was a shipment of glycerine to go into production. Making a batch takes a day.
Shade said her product has less viscosity commercial sanitizers so it’s a bit more watery but it packs the same cleaning punch. It’s made with alcohol that’s 192 proof.
Another batch of sanitizer will be made when a second shipment of glycerine arrives next week, she said.
Al Badgley, a longtime firefighter and ambulance crew member who hosts a community safety program on KHNS, said sanitizer is especially important for businesses and offices that must stay open to the public.
Customers should use sanitizer before entering stores and offices, Badgley said. “You’re touching your car and the doorknob to the place you’re going into. You might have washed your hands before you left home, but you’ve touched things since then.”