With 2020 looking to be a record breaking year in terms of sales, Craft Link invested significantly in advertising and promotions and was in the process of tying up the details for a major World Gin Day event including breaking of a Guinness World Record when the Corona epidemic hit and the lockdown began.

At the time there was much internal talk about sanitiser and converting some of the gin production into sanitiser production – after all, ethanol is ethanol. Within a short while it became obvious that the demand for sanitiser was far greater than anyone had anticipated.

Craft Link followed the same principles in the manufacture and sell of sanitiser that they had used in setting up the distillery.

• Keep prices as low as possible
• Make a reasonable profit
• Make as much of a difference to the greater society as possible
• Be ethical in all dealings

Reaching out to Derek Watts to suggest that there might be a Carte Blanche programme featuring distilleries around the world that had converted to supplying a much needed element in the fight against Covid19. He was interested but while that was ruminated by the powers that be he also suggested that if Craft Link could make sanitiser available to his wife Kirsty Watts who was looking after a number of communities in need.

Craft Link Supplied over 2,000 litres to Kirsty and to other worthwhile organisations excluding the ad-hoc (ongoing) requests that are handled on a daily basis.

Whilst none of the Sanitiser (which consists of denatured alcohol and can’t be drunk) has the wonderful smell of a Ginologist gin, Craft Link has been able to travail the difficult lockdown successfully and has been able to not only hold onto their staff at full salaries, they’ve hired a significant number of new staff members and passed large volumes of work onto bottling companies, third party contractors, wholesalers and more.

In the end, Craft Link congratulates itself in the fact that they grew their company but stayed true to their values of making a difference to themselves, their immediate sphere of influence and to communities in need.