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INEOS sets the wheels in motion on sanitiser delivery
Sir Dave Brailsford and his Tour de France winning cycle team are supporting the project which was initiated by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of INEOS, to combine racing team logistics with the manufacturing and enterprise of INEOS.
INEOS originally announced that it would bring its Newton Ayciffe plant online in just 10 days with deliveries starting immediately afterwards. Production began well within the time frame with the plant now running three shifts around the clock. The company has repeated this in Herne Germany, Lavera in France and has announced a fourth facility in North East France in Étain.
Sir Dave Brailsford says, “Governments have asked industry to help and INEOS was proud to answer the call. Team INEOS is used to moving at speed but ten days from start to finish for four plants already was incredibly tight. We are all in this together and I am grateful to everyone in the entire INEOS family for their hands-on approach to getting the job done.”
Commencing 31 March, the bottles produced from the INEOS plant were issued to the NHS for free. After meeting the needs of front line medical and care services, INEOS will also make ‘pocket bottle’ hand sanitisers available for people’s personal use. These will all be produced to World Health Organisation specifications.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe says, “Getting the hand sanitiser into production in just ten days was a huge team effort and Team INEOS led by Sir Dave Brailsford, has made a great contribution alongside the rest of the INEOS family. We knew there was a massive shortage of hand sanitisers across the UK and that speed was crucial. We believe these INEOS sanitisers will play a key part in the fight against the virus, helping protect our NHS front line staff and vulnerable people across the country.”
All of INEOS nine polymer and chemical divisions are currently supplying products for the medical and pharmaceutical industries with many of them now being used in the fight for CV19 vaccines and treatments as well as in the production of essential products in the medical field, including rubber gloves, PVC saline infusions, syringes, ventilators and medical tubes as well as to purify public drinking water.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of INEOS adds, “INEOS is a company with enormous resources and manufacturing skills. We are not only planning to produce a million bottles of hand sanitiser a month in the UK but the same again at similar facilities in Germany and France. If we can find other ways to help in the Coronavirus battle, we remain absolutely committed to playing our part”.