WINGHAM, ONT. -- Voisin’s Maple Syrup near Formosa, Ont. would normally still be bottling maple syrup at this time of year, but instead they’re bottling hand sanitizer.
“Typically, this time of year, we’d be bottling syrup for the tourism industry. So, we managed to put together this assembly line. It’s different pieces of our building, we’ve put together to bottle the hand sanitizer,” says Tyson Voisin, of Voisin’s Maple Syrup.
A family connection brought hand sanitizer into the to the Voisin’s maple syrup facility. Relatives who runs BK Wholesalers in Listowel, called them up to see if Voisin’s could bottle hand sanitizer they were shipping in.
Voisin jumped at the chance, “We want to keep our staff busy and the ability to do something for the community is amazing."
Right now, Voisin’s is bottling about 80,000 litres of hand sanitizer each week, with plans to ramp up to as much as 300,000 litres.
The hand sanitizer will be sold across Canada, although BK’s have already donated over 1,000 litres of it, along with 50,000 masks to local health care facilities.
“Our bottles, our cardboard, our caps, are all made in Ontario. So, it’s nice to be able to keep factories rolling everywhere in the province,” says Allie Gabel, of BK’s Wholesalers.
While the switchover from syrup to sanitizer wasn’t a simple one, now that they’re set up, Voisin says they’ll bottle sanitizer as long as demand dictates.
“We’re still learning with the equipment because not everything works the same way as maple syrup, but we’re getting through it. It’s been a challenging time for everyone. This is really just a drop in the bucket, for what we’ve done."
The hand sanitizer will be branded GIGI’S, the grandmother moniker given to one of BK’s founders. It’s in stores across Canada now.
