Where has all the hand sanitiser gone?

Shelves all over the world are empty, there’s slim pickings online and the few suppliers that are selling are pricing at way over the odds. We’re being told to wash our hands and use hand sanitiser – but a lot of people are struggling to find any.

If everyone in the world had one small bottle of sanitiser we would need 385 million litres of the stuff.

Before coronavirus, the world produced less than a thousandth of that per year, about 300,000 litres, according market analysts Arizton Advisory and Intelligence.

That perhaps explains why there is now, as the pandemic sweeps the world, a problem getting hold of it.

On Amazon, if you try getting alcohol-based sanitiser – the type recommended by the World Health Organization – you’ll find all of the usual brands are sold out.

Here in the UK, just a few days ago only one seller seemed to have any in stock. A 500ml bottle was priced at £30 ($35) – at least 10 times what it would have been in February. It’s since been reduced to £20, but that is still about seven times pre-pandemic prices.

It’s easy to accuse sellers like these of price-gouging and many reviews underneath the listing did just that. But the company selling it, Herts Tools, says it’s not that simple.

“We’ve been getting an unfair bashing really,” said the friendly man who answered the phone, Paul Stephenson.

“There are people out there saying we’re taking the mickey but I can assure you we’re not.

“We’re in a position where we’re making enough profit margin on the hand sanitiser just to keep ourselves afloat.”

The company usually sells and rents tools to the construction industry and it only started selling sanitiser because customers were requesting it.

But it has struggled to get hold of supplies and the cost is rising every day. “I can’t even guarantee what I paid today I’m going to pay tomorrow,” says Stephenson.

And that’s because the price of the key ingredient – alcohol – has inc