INEOS (London, U.K.) has built two new hand sanitizer plants in the U.S. to provide hand sanitizer to hospitals for free.
The facilities will be located in Jacksonville, near Little Rock Arkansas and Neville Island in Pennsylvania. Each site will produce 1 million bottles of hand sanitizer each month, to help with the nationwide shortage. These will be produced according to World Health Organization specifications, specifically designed to kill bacteria and viruses.
Hand to mouth contamination is one of the main ways that the Coronavirus infects people and there is a critical shortage of hand sanitizers across the USA. Supplies to hospitals will be free of charge for the period of the crisis with the public being able to purchase bottles through retailers.
Ineos has already built hand sanitizer facilities in the UK, Germany and France to supply 4 million bottles across Europe. Many other chemical companies have initiated production of hand sanitizers to help fight COVID-19, including Shell, ExxonMobil, Axalta, BASF, PPG, Johnson Matthey, Lanxess and many more.
Production in Jacksonville started this week and is already producing 3,600 gallons a day. First deliveries have today been made to Baptist Health and Arkansas Children’s Hospital, both in Little Rock. Deliveries to other COVID hotspot states are to follow, to help protect front line staff across the country.
Production and distribution in Neville Island will be up and running early May providing regional hand sanitizer supply for hospitals across Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and New Jersey.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of INEOS adds, “INEOS is a company with enormous resources and manufacturing skills. We will supply a million bottles of hand sanitizer a month from each of our new plants in Arkansas and Pennsylvania with the same again in the UK, France and Germany. If we can find other ways to help in the Coronavirus battle we remain absolutely committed to playing our part.”
INEOS produces chemicals that go into antibiotics, paracetamol, anti-inflammatories, anti-virals, aspirin and the reagent chemicals that go into testing kits and the plastics going into medical equipment, face masks, ventilators, sterile gloves, eye visors. Our acetonitrile is used in essential pharmaceutical analysis in the procedures necessary to find a vaccine.
The US Department of Homeland Security has described products from INEOS Acrylonitrile as “Critical to ensure National Resilience” in their CV-19 response.