Due to the Corona Virus pandemic, social distancing, the need to maintain good hand cleanliness to kerb the spread of the disease and the shortage of sanitising products in normal shops and super-markets, a local business has stepped up to fill the gap and supply the much-needed hand and spray-surface sanitisers to the local community. “Household Compounds and Refills” owners, said that they couldn’t just sit back and watch peoples’ frustration over empty sanitiser product shelves, whilst they had the ability and equipment to make the products and supply them to our community. Their new sanitiser is called “Die Corona” as a humorous play on the song title “My Sharona”.
Late March, in response to the spread of Covid19, the federal government passed legislation allowing businesses, which don’t normally produce sanitiser products, to manufacture these essential products, so long as they comply with the World Health Organisations’ published recipes.
Steve Gregory from Household Compounds and Refills said ”it was encouraging that some quite varied stores, on and around Bribie, were happy to make these necessary products available to our community, but it was also disappointing that some stores preferred to wait for orders of imported products or stock no sanitisers at all, rather than support a local business attempting to keep our community safe. He also said that they had done everything possible to keep their prices as low as possible, whilst enduring “price gouging” from suppliers of hand sanitiser ingredients, as well as bottle suppliers. The price of these items has quadrupled in the last few weeks, due to a world-wide shortage of bottles, caps, sprays, pump-lids etc.
One of the other issues confronted by this local business, is that they are simply a small producer and the product is “hand-made”, as opposed to large factories, that pour thousands of litres of ingredients into their machines and thousands of bottles come out the other end, but at least this local producer can supply product, when these large companies can’t.
It’s quite difficult to compete with cheap imported products when a small bottle, filled with air, costs $1.50, when a few weeks ago it was worth thirty cents. Having said that, the fact that many stores don’t have any hand sanitiser on their shelves, when a local company can supply almost as much as they want, seems a little strange, but quite a few media outlets have published stories about new producers of sanitisers, not putting enough ethanol in their products to kill the viruses.
The World Health Organisation say that an alcohol content of 70% or more will kill 99.9% of germs and viruses on contact. “Die Corona” Hand and Surface Sanitisers are produced with 75% Ethyl Alcohol. There are three aromas, Plain, Eucalyptus and Lemon-lime, available on 100ml spray bottles, 250ml and 350ml refill bottles to put in your own spray and pump bottles.
The new federal government legislation opened the doors for new manufacturers to distribute their Covid19-Busting sanitisers to some quite un-expected types of outlets, as well as some conventional stores like the IGA supermarket at Sandstone Point. In and around the Bribie area, “Die Corona” can also be found at Wrights Fruit Barn, Bribie Chiropractic, Bribie Simply Healthy, Bribie Sports Cycles and Bribie Beach Hut Surf Shop in Woorim.