An island distillery has made its first batch of 500 litres of alcohol-based hand sanitiser to a World Health Organisation approved recipe.

It will be distributed to healthcare facilities, emergency services, schools and other essential organisations.

Bosses at Fynoderee in the north of the island had been alarmed over shortages of the product in the light of the Covid-19 crisis, as first reported in our sister paper the Manx Independent.

A spokesman said: ’To get to this point we have had to liaise at speed with several areas of government (Trading Standards, Customs and Excise and the government analyst for advice and testing) as well as many private individuals who have kindly offered their expertise and assistance and we are grateful to everybody who has contributed to the project to date.’

The firm added: ’Initially our ongoing production will also be focused on supply to the island’s healthcare facilities, emergency services and other essential services to meet the needs of the community as a whole.

’We are investigating the ability to widen distribution to the general public but this involves a whole other set of protocols we need to manage / overcome and we will report further on this.’