Cavan company launches hand sanitiser product
Cavan-based pharmaceutical company based Univet recently launched a new hand sanitiser, SanKind, which is being sold to schools, churches, medical centres and the retail market.
Developed by Univet's in-house team of experts, SanKind’s quick-drying capabilities leave hands feeling immediately soft and sanitised.
The core formula is based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) formulation for protection against SARS-CoV-2 (the strain of Coronavirus that causes COVID-19), containing 75% (v/v) Isopropyl Alcohol.
Additional moisturising agents have been added, and its neutral pH ensures an even spread with a comfortable experience.
Univet, a company perhaps better-known for specialising in producing veterinary medicines, boasts a regulatory team of specialists who collectively have over 100 years of experience. The diversification into hand sanitiser was a natural response to meet the demands and needs of the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A spokesperson for the company explained: “On the back of a number of queries, and the country faced with a shortage of sanitiser agents, we tasked our R&D team to design a product that is both kind to the skin but guarantees sanitisation.”
The resulting product, SanKind, is manufactured and filled in Univet's ISO class 7 clean rooms and tested in our on-site labs.
“We treat our sanitiser with the same levels of regulatory and quality assurance as all of our medicinal products, with raw material and finished product safety and quality documentation, along with in-house quality, safety and efficacy testing. We also monitor our product post sale, retaining a number of samples from each batch and putting it through a set of rigorous scientific testing to ascertain its pH, viscosity and specific gravity at specific time points over a three-year period.”
During initial development, Univet's microbiologists challenged SanKind to a broad range of commonly encountered by human pathogens. It proved 100% effective at killing these micro-organisms at a concentration approximately 1,000 times the level normally found on human skin, using only 1ml of product at time zero.
Univet is now asking consumers to buy both Irish and buy local.
“We have been successfully supplying schools nationwide for the past number of months and have received extremely positive feedback from the principals involved and hope to help many more schools as they face the onerous challenge of reopening in the midst of the pandemic.”
The Department of Education has circulated a list of 14 suppliers of safety equipment that can offer the full suite of PPE including hand sanitiser to schools. However, they have also confirmed that the purchase of PPE from other suppliers will still be covered under their COVID-19 Capitation Grant.”
Univet is firmly focused on the future: At present SanKind is registered under a temporary derogation due to the pandemic, but the local company has already started the process of fully registering the product for the European market. They are currently appointing labs to test the efficacy of SanKind based on a number of European standards (EN1500, EN1276) and for enveloped viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 (EN14476).
They have also identified a lab in Europe that is prepared to test SanKind against SARS-CoV-2 in mid-September. The WHO formulation guarantees its ability to kill COVID-19, but Univet are still keen to show this additional proof of efficacy.
Pic above: The Univet team with their new product. Back (from left): Nicola Feeney, QC Manager and Siobhan Crowe, pharmacist; front, Siobhan Sweeney, Q A Manager and Brian Crowe, Product Development and Sales.