Our production team at the Curious Brewery came up with the initiative and, after initially producing our own small scale spirits-based sanitiser, teamed up with the local Givaudan site in Ashford to be able to deliver hand sanitiser en-masse to the wider Kent community.

Between both of us, more than 1 tonne of hand sanitiser is now being distributed each week to key workers across the Kent region and wider South East. To date, more than 300kg of the

WHO-recommended handrub formulation have been distributed to more than 100 Kent midwives, as well as 100kg to Kent care homes, 50kg to three Ashford GP practises, the William Harvey Hospital’s A&E department and to many more local key workers.

Stock is also being delivered, via our Curious customised ‘Beer Defender’, to the ethical supermarket group, Farmdrop, who work directly with local farmers to deliver farm-fresh produce to customers. The hand sanitiser will be distributed to hundreds of key workers in agriculture across the South East. It will also be used by us at the Curious Brewery, as well as our Chapel Down Group within our own vineyard, winemaking and brewery teams as they continue to produce our award-winning range of English wine, beer and spirits to meet customer demand at this time.

Frazer Thompson, Chapel Down Group CEO, said “During these unprecedented times, the sense of community is more important than ever. We have been so incredibly humbled by the support, generosity and well-wishes of our customers over the past few weeks, we felt compelled to reach out to support others at this time.

“The hard work and personal sacrifice that NHS workers are heroically displaying right now is also being demonstrated by key workers in every community across the country – from farmers and fruit pickers to delivery drivers and maintenance teams, and from care home workers and midwives to postmen and refuge collectors. Lives of so many individuals are being put at risk to help ensure the greater public are able to survive and thrive, and so we have a duty to be protecting these individuals as best we can.

“We are incredibly grateful to our friends at Givaudan for so swiftly adapting their business to enable the large scale production of hand sanitiser. Without partnering with these guys, we wouldn’t have been able to reach the number of key workers that we have these past few weeks and we will continue to offer our service for as long as is needed.”

“This is a great partnership,” says Jonathan Fairclough, Head of Givaudan’s Ashford Site, “Givaudan is a global organisation, but our sites are part of the local community, and working with The Curious Brewery to support so many key workers has been excellent.”

We are inviting local community groups who are in need of hand sanitiser to get in touch at brewery@curiousbrewing.com.