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Florida design studio Yield is using its production facility to create a spray hand sanitiser to help reduce the spread Covid-19.

Yield specialises in furniture and kitchenware but decided to use its manufacturing abilities and expertise in response to shortages caused by coronavirus.

The studio, which is based in Saint Augustine, said it is capable of “producing millions of units” of the antiseptic.

Yield designed the hand sanitiser to help organisations struggling to get large supplies of the antiseptic. A range of sizes is offered, from personal spritzers to bulk containers.

“They’ve been struggling to find suppliers that can handle their volume needs, and we’ve been able to do that and make them available at a fair price,” Yield’s co-founder Andrew Deming told Dezeen.

Yield has created a spray bottle for its hand sanitiser because the studio said traditional sanitisers that use droplets tend to be less efficient. Yield claims the spritz allows for many more applications than gel.

“We specifically formulated our sanitiser as a spray application to deliver the most value,” the studio said.  “Spray sanitisers deliver up to 15-20 times more uses than gel with the same efficacy.”

The spray can be used on surfaces, machinery and tools, in addition to hands, according to the studio.

The sanitiser is 70 per cent ethyl alcohol and a mix of essential oils like bergamot, organic blue chamomile and cypress oil. Inactive ingredients are water, fractionated coconut oil and glycerin.

It is produced in Utah and meets the US’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Pharmacopeia (USP) guidelines for in-vitro efficacy against coronaviruses, including Covid-19.

Sizes include one-ounce, four-ounce and eight-ounce sprayers. The studio can also produce larger sizes for hospitals and offices, such as one-gallon jugs for refill stations and bulk-sized palletized totes of 275 to 330 grams.

The spray bottles can also be customised with a business logo on the backside near the ingredient information.

Yield is working with health nonprofit United Way and local governments to provide the sanitiser, but said it is open to working with other organisations.

The studio’s transition to making sanitiser follows a number of efforts in the architecture and design community to offer help during the coronavirus crisis. Architecture firms across America like BIG, KPF and Handel Architects have teamed up as part of an open-source project to manufacture face shields to protect hospital workers treating sicks patients.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also developed a plastic face shield to help during the supplies shortage.

Others are turning to care units that can be built in a short time to support hospitals, such as flat-pack shelters by Jupe, SheltAir inflatable pods and shipping containers by Carlo Ratti.

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