From Liquor to Antiseptics: How a Venezuelan Distillery Is Responding to COVID-19

(Photo: Twitter)

Venezuelan company, the Santa Teresa Distillery has recently turned its steaming distillation towers and steel vats on what's described as a palm-covered "colonial-era hacienda" and sugarcane fields in a Venezuelan countryside to combat COVID-19.

The majority of its rum production has made way for the filling of bottles with antiseptic alcohol. More so, the product has hauled to pharmacies and became hand sanitizer, shoring up supplies in the middle of this worldwide crisis that's threatening to swarm the broken hospitals of Venezuela.

According to Deyanira Alfonzo, the production manager of Santa Teresa, the company has launched the initiative as they have constantly been their community's close part. It is the main function of this product manager to oversee the distillery's "noisy packaging room," where bottles that clank is riding a conveyor line to be filled specifically with ethyl alcohol.

The bottles then get capped and labeled, and then, boxed up-a process, Alfonso shared, the company will keep as long as the strong need for the product is there.

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From 20 to 60 Percent Production of Antiseptic Alcohol

Normally, the distillery would dedicate around 20 percent of its production to antiseptic alcohol. However, this was increased to 60 percent, days after the pandemic hit Venezuela.

While much of the alcohol is being delivered to the market, Santa Teresa said, it is allotting a large portion for donation to its neighboring communities.

Meanwhile, the first two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Venezuela were first reported on March 13.

According to the authorities, the number has risen to roughly 143 people including three deaths.

The economic and political crises of Venezuela have left the country especially susceptible to COVID-19.

Health care workers say the majority of the hospitals have lacked the basics such as water and soap, not to mention, being ill-equipped to deal with common ailments even before the global pandemic.

Essentially, Caracas residents are covering their mouths using a face mask each time they go out of their home in the morning to buy food. 

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Joining Other Distilleries in Making Antiseptic Alcohol Instead of Rum

Santa Teresa is among the few privately-owned Venezuelan companies, located a 60-minute drive from Caracas in La Victoria. It has been operated by the same clan for five generations already, and it is currently being led by its executive president, Alberto C. Vollmer.

The firm's premier brand, Santa Teresa 1976, was conceptualized to celebrate family-operated business that produces rum for over 200 years now. To date, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Santa Teresa has joined the other distilleries all over the world, by producing alcohol products targeted at shielding the health of people.

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Puerto Rico's Distillery Serrallés produces ethyl alcohol and donates it to the medical centers of the island. Additionally, the Ambev, the biggest beer maker of Brazil, has transformed one of its beer breweries to produce hand sanitizers and donate them to public hospitals.

The Scotch Whiskey Association, for its part, says, the beverage firms it represents have committed enough for the production of "50 million bottles of hand sanitizers." And lastly, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, almost 600 distilleries in the US have also been making hand sanitizers to combat the infectious disease.