A distillery in Corris has announced it will start production of hand sanitiser in the fight against the coronavirus, but are appealing to the public for help.

Dyfi Distillery say they will make a small amount of alcohol hand rub and are appealing to the public for plastic containers to put it in.

The distillery will donate full containers to local organisations in need of it most during the coronavirus outbreak.

Production is due to start this Friday, 27 March.

Appealing to the public, the distillery said: “We are about to produce a small quantity of alcohol hand rub, to World Health Organisation hand sanitiser formulation, which we mostly intend to donate to health care and essential service providers in the local area.

“While we were one of the lead distilleries in UK-wide negotiations, like everyone else we are struggling to obtain raw materials, but most importantly packaging (our initial orders of bottles and dispensers hasn’t shown up).

“If you’re local to us (eg Machynlleth, Aberdyfi, Dolgellau) and can provide plastic containers of 100ml or 500ml then please, please, please could you email [email protected] as soon as possible?"

They added: “We’ll be giving it away, but we don’t mind paying for containers if we have to. This is urgent because (a) this formulation needs 72 hours resting in the container before use (b) it needs transferring to the container immediately on production (so sadly we can’t do refilling on an ad hoc basis).

“If you are a provider of health care or other essential services in a similar local area and are critically short of access to hand sanitiser-type product, please email us at [email protected] and we will do what we can to help.”

The distillery has also given thanks to Stori Beers in Bala for their generous donation of bottles.