Billionaire businessman pledges to build two hand sanitiser factories in ten days
A billionaire businessman who was raised in Manchester has pledged to build two hand sanitiser factories in just ten days.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is one of the country’s richest men, has announced his firm Ineos is building the two factories in a bid to tackle the spread of coronavirus.
Sir Jim, who was born and raised in Oldham, said his firm aims to produce a million bottles of hand sanitiser a month when the plants are in operation.
Talks are taking place with the NHS on supplying the products to hospitals for free.
One factory will be at Ineos site at Newton Aycliffe, near Middlesbrough, and the other will be in Germany.
Sir Jim said: “It is becoming increasingly clear that hand to mouth infection is a significant cause of Corona virus contagion and Imeos is Europe’s largest manufacturer of the core ingredient of hand sanitiser.
“We will build two factories in the UK and Germany in 10 days to produce very substantial supplies.”
Ineos is Europe’s largest producer of two of the key ingredients of hand sanitiser isopropyl alcohol and ethanol.
Tom Crotty, a director at Ineos, said the company had put plans in place a week ago.
Mr Crotty said: “We figured that we’d already pushed as much of our product as possible into these uses but there’s a limit on capacity to produce the gel.
Switching the lines will cost about £2m in the short term but the company had not yet assessed the potential size of the longer-term market.
Sir Jim said he hoped to produce “very substantial supplies” of hand sanitiser for hospital and private use, with talks under way with retailers on making 50ml “pocket bottles” and 250ml containers available to consumers.
