During these uncertain times, it’s important to know that someone is watching out for you. Superior does just that with our technical expertise, industry experience and state-of-the-art testing facilities.
With the onset of COVID-19 earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) both quickly recognized that the ethanol supply chain used in hand sanitizers was not sufficient enough to fulfill the demand in the United States. The TTB authorized anyone making ethanol to start producing the appropriate Special Denatured Alcohols (SDAs), and the FDA issued an approved hand sanitizer formula for manufacturing companies to utilize.
On the ethanol production side, the difficulty was that some distilleries weren’t familiar with making these “cosmetic grade” products. As a result, there included levels of natural by-products that would have caused health or safety problems with consumers. The FDA ultimately realized this and implemented some stricter specifications on the ethanol, but not before some of the contaminated hand sanitizer reached the market. Currently, the FDA is compiling a list of hundreds of hand sanitizer products that contain unhealthy contaminants.
Superior was in front of this issue. For starters, our technical team vetted all new suppliers, ensuring the end result of what we provide is exactly what the customer requires. Then we utilized appropriate protocols and testing to prevent our customers from purchasing ethanol that could cause harm to consumers and legal issues for our customers. And we do quality checks to ensure our processes are never compromised. These are just some of the ways Superior works to add value to your supply chain—every day, even in the middle of a pandemic.
