Kat Merryfield is in the business of making people feel better. She's now also doing her part to make sure folks stay well.
Merryfield, the owner of Kat's Naturals, a CBD manufacturing company located in Dunlap, has turned a portion of her 16,000-square foot plant into a hand sanitizer manufacturing area. She came up with the idea after noticing a shortage of sanitizer and the price gouging that has hit the market during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We are really into our community and when we found out there was a shortage of hand sanitizer and we had the ability to help, the decision was a no-brainer," said Merryfield, whose company began manufacturing organic CBD products at the Dunlap plant in 2017.
The company will, according to Merryfield, donate gallons of the sanitizer to police and health departments in Dunlap and Gruetli-Laager as well as others.
"I contacted a couple of the Autism associations we deal with in Chattanooga and we're going to donate to their organizations as well so we can get it into their hands because they are having a hard time finding it," Merryfield said. "We also have an organization here that delivers food to the elderly, so we're also going to donate to that."
The need in the Chattanooga area is clear. Chattanooga Whiskey sold out of all 1,250 bottles of its locally-produced sanitizer in two hours Tuesday.
The general public can purchase four ounce bottles of Merryfield's sanitizer through the company's website, Katsnaturals.com, where requests for donations can also be made. Bulk orders, in one gallon and half-gallon sizes, can be made at Wholesale@Katsnaturals.com.
"We are not going to be price gouging, which we've seen a lot of people do," Merryfield said. "We're going to be selling it for a little more than it cost us to manufacture so we can keep our employees paid. We have to keep our doors open."
Merryfield discussed the project with employees to gauge interest. It took only moments to decide to move forward.
"The employees were really excited for two reasons," she said. "One, as long as we're not shut down they still have a job and a lot of our employees have had to start working from home, so we've kept a very sparse manufacturing staff. They like to come to work, so they wanted to make sure we weren't going to shut down.
"Also, our whole employee base are community members. They've lived here for most of their lives and they are really excited to help."
Producing the sanitizer, as other area businesses have also done, was fairly seamless according to Merryfield, with only a few hurdles to clear.
"The biggest question at first was what do we need to do this?," she said "Because we are able to source products in bulk, we were able to contact a lot of our suppliers and find out what they had. The hardest part was finding sugar in bulk because people were buying it up."
Merryfield found the sweet stuff at the Dunlap Buffet, a local business that shut down due to the pandemic. A portion of the plant was set up, complete with safety equipment and ventilation, for production and, as of Wednesday, the operation can produce 40,000 bottles of the ethanol-based sanitizer in a typical eight-hour work shift.
"We're excited about the project," Merryfield said. "Now we just have to get the word out that a CBD manufacturing plant is now making hand sanitizer and how people can get it."
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6296; follow on Twitter @youngsports22
Anita Shipley displays the hand sanitizer being manufactured by Kat's Naturals, a CBD manufacturing company located in Dunlap, Tenn. / Contributed photo by Kats' Naturals