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WFHB’S junior correspondent, Katrine Bruner reports on Cardinal Spirits Distillery that has been making hand sanitizer for citizens in Bloomington since March. She also discusses how the hand sanitizer is made and the reason for demand in this product right now.(Images Courtesy of Cardinalspirits.com)

Cardinal Spirits Distilling Hand Sanitizer for Community

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On March 23, Indiana’s Governor Holcomb announced the official stay-at-home order for Hoosiers. During this time, many citizens were experiencing the typical reactions of a global crisis: shock, terror, and most of all, panic. 

The announcement of most local businesses being forced to close -at least for contact service- was made prior to the stay-at-home order, on March 16th, so many restaurants and bars experienced the panic of not being open for sit-down orders — the main way owners make their livelihood. 

As a college town, Bloomington has been known for their service, especially in bars. With the forced shut down of all the local bars, people worried not only for sources of products but even the social interactions that would be lost.

As a result of this and to help bring the community together through everything, Cardinal Spirits Distillery, off the B-Line Trail in Bloomington, decided to begin making hand sanitizer for citizens to get for free, asking only for donations if possible to help employees during the pandemic. 

This proved to be a great way of keeping the community safe and connected while also continuing to support local businesses. President and Co-Founder of Cardinal Spirits, Jeff Wuslich spoke on what the business has been doing to help reduce the panic and provide aid to the community.

He said that since the stay-at-home order was put in place, the distillery’s tasting room has shut down and they have moved to just carry-out orders for cocktails and bottles. They include a free bottle of hand sanitizer with every purchase, however, the orders for hand sanitizer alone have been the most demanded product from them.

Wuslich stated,  “We’ve really been ramping up on our hand sanitizer.” Cardinal Spirits customers now range from local people needing a couple of ounce bottles, to businesses and organizations getting 20 to 1,000 gallons of the hand sanitizer in preparation for the virus, Wuslich said.

The hand sanitizer recipe comes from the FDA, with 80% alcohol by volume. Posted on their webpage, Cardinal Spirits has their recipe on how they are making the sanitizer but primarily they say it is made from alcohol and emollient.

Just north of Bloomington, Hotel Tango Distillery in Indianapolis has already donated over 2,000 bottles of hand sanitizer to local organizations in efforts to help out as well. Across the country, in Vancouver, Washington Quartz Mountain Distillery was another place to make changes to their product line.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that if soap and water are not available at hand, a hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol would suffice.

As for the history of hand sanitizer and how it became popular, the product was first introduced in 1966 to be used in medical settings such as hospitals and healthcare facilities. The goal was to provide a sufficient and less time-consuming alternative to removing germs and bacterias from the skin. 

Hand sanitizers were made popular in the early 1990s, especially from the American brand, Purell. During the 2000s, hospitals gradually began using hand sanitizers diligently, placing pumps throughout medical facilities around the world.

Aside from health care facilities, consumer sales of hand sanitizer first spiked amidst the H1N1 swine flu which infected more than 60 million people in the U.S. alone during the year 2009. Whether it was from fear or from recommendation, hand sanitizer sales went up to 70% in the U.S. during the period of the Swine flu pandemic.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak began in January, sales of hand sanitizers swelled across several international markets. According to CNBC, U.S. consumers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on hand sanitizer each year now. Globally, the market for hand sanitizer products could top $2.1 billion by 2027 according to one estimate by Fior Markets.

Purchases of the disinfectant have skyrocketed in the U.S. since the first case of the virus hit the country. Currently, big alcohol producers such as Anheuser-Busch and Pernod Ricard have begun producing hand sanitizer to donate to hospitals and government health agencies. 

Jeff Wuslich from Cardinal Spirits expressed his thoughts on what the future will look like for the Distillery and other lines of business, stating, “Until there’s a reasonable vaccine, we’re in a really interesting system.”

He explained that things will be different even after the panic has died down. People may need to be checked before going into restaurants and businesses, and things will most likely be sanitized and kept cleaner than before, but as Wuslich stated, people and businesses won’t know how things will be until the panic has subsided from a solution or an aid to this pandemic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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