With the shortages of essential items such as face masks and hand sanitiser during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of brands are changing their business plans to help with the shortages:

French winemakers are also getting in on the act too - by turning unsold wine into hand sanitiser and ethanol!

Reserved for pharmaceutical industry

According to a report by news agency AFP, the worldwide lockdown has left French winemakers with millions of litres of unsold wine.

Instead of letting them go to waste, they've decided to turn them into hand sanitiser.

By doing so, they could also make room for the next harvest.

Didier Josso, the head of the wine branch in the farming agency FranceAgriMer, told the news agency that the alcohol from the distillation is exclusively reserved for the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry for the production of hand sanitiser and ethanol.

The winemakers will be rewarded with €78 (RM374) in compensation if the wine is certified as belonging to a region and €58 (RM278) if not.

Josso revealed that European public funds will be used to finance the distillation of two million hectolitres of French wine.

France is not the first country to resort to such measures to get rid of unsold wine, as Spain and Italy have resorted to similar measures too.

Hey, like they say, don't waste good wine, right?