“We decided, ‘You know what? There’s a huge shortage of hand sanitiser. Why don’t we just do this? There’s obviously a great need.'”
The current Covid-19 crisis has led to an uncertain and uneasy time for many businesses in Ireland. While some unfortunately have to close their doors, others are lucky enough to adapt and offer support for those in need during the crisis.
Speaking on JOE’s business show, All In, which is backed by AIB, Pádraic Ó Griallais spoke about how he turned his gin making distillery, Micil Distillery, into a hand sanitiser production line to help bring products to those who need it most.
“The demand for our product declined fairly dramatically because we’re selling most of the products through the bars and restaurants and obviously they shut down. The other thing is we do tours of the distillery, or we did, and that obviously came to a standstill.
“So we were like, ‘Okay, we have a couple of options here. We can kind of keep it going one day a week or something like that, dispatching to the wholesalers that we deal with.’
“We decided, ‘You know what? There’s a huge shortage of hand sanitiser.’ We had a number of phone calls in the weeks in the run up to this and I thought, ‘Look, why don’t we just do this? There’s obviously a great need.’
“And over the course of a couple of days we decided, you know what, this is something that could be really good for the community and also it’ll keep us busy while this thing is ongoing.”
“There was a bit of a learning curve. The biggest learning curve for me was actually dealing with new regulations. We’re very strictly regulated in terms of making alcohol and then throw into the mix a whole set of new regulations.
“We had to get permission from the likes of the Department of Agriculture, the Revenue Commissioners, the HSE, and the various stuff that they need complied with. That was a bit of a steep learning curve. But I got myself up to speed on all of that with some intense study and all the rest of it.”
