A GREENOCK skincare business is leading the way in helping to minimise the spread of coronavirus on the frontline.

Trade Right International, based in Lynedoch Industrial Estate, has won a contract to produce 100,000 bottles of hand sanitiser for NHS Scotland.

The social enterprise, set up in 2008 by Trev and Denice Gregory, makes luxury natural soap bars and skincare products under the Carishea brand.

Trev and Denice get a lot of businesses from hotels and had been experiencing a downturn in sales due to the huge impact of coronavirus on travel and tourism.

They were unsure of how they were going to keep going - but hearing about the work of community organisations across Inverclyde spurred them on.

Denice said: "We had started considering furlough leave for our staff.

"When we heard that local foodbanks and community hubs were short of hand sanitiser we looked at manufacturing a conditioning version.

"We made an initial batch and sold it to them at a very low price, just enough to cover our costs.

"We then heard that companies including distillers had been offering to help make sanitiser on a larger scale, so we signed up to a list of potential suppliers being gathered by Scottish Enterprise.

"The next thing we knew, we had a phone call asking us if we could make sanitiser for the NHS."

Trade Right International’s initial task is to bottle 100,000 units of sanitiser at the Greenock factory.

After that, the team will start to manufacture its own formula, which includes conditioner to help prevent hands becoming irritated due to frequent washing and sanitising.

Trade Right International works with disadvantaged communities in Ghana, offering trade and employment as a route to combatting poverty.

It also operates an employability initiative for ex-offenders and recovering drug and alcohol users.

Trev and Denice are pleased that the project will help people - and have gone from wondering how to keep staff busy to needing extra pairs of hands.

Denice added: "Everyone in our community really is pulling together, which is lovely to see.

"We’ve had offers of voluntary help from local people who have been furloughed from their usual jobs.

"Given the overall shortage of sanitiser, we did have commercial companies contacting us with what could have been very lucrative contracts but the whole ethos of our business is about helping people, not just about making money.

"Doing this to help our NHS workers stay safe fits in perfectly with what Trade Right International is all about."