Since April 2, American Vapor Company has bottled hand sanitizer to sell in bulk. Starting April 6, people can order it too.

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas — Justin Suriff and his partners at American Vapor Company decided to change their manufacturing from e-liquids for e-cigarettes and vapes to hand sanitizer to combat coronavirus.

They named the sanitizer label Naturally Pure Hand Sanitizer.

“Right now, we aren’t doing any e-liquids," Suriff said. "We feel like this is most important and most vape shops are closed right now anyway, so they’re not selling much e-liquid.”

Suriff and his dad, Darrell, were in the middle of moving the company to their new Pflugerville location when they decided to unpack the machinery first instead of last.

"This is not how we planned on starting the move, but we put everything on hold and we moved all our machines in that were designed to produce e-liquid for vapor and we turned them into machines to produce sanitizer," Darrell Suriff said.

For both Justin Suriff, the chief operations officer, and Darrell Suriff, the chief executive officer, this change was necessary to help fight the spread of the virus and keep their workers employed.

“Most of the employees you see are employees we already had at the lab and/or people who were laid off from their jobs that we brought on here to help us during this crisis," Darrell Suriff said.

“I expect we’re going to be doing this as long as we can manage the supply chain to continue, which will be the goal as long as society needs it," Justin Suriff said.

Are you properly sanitizing your hands? Ernst Cajuste from Naturally Pure Hans Sanitizer demonstrates how his company says it should be done. Posted by Mike Marut on Sunday, April 5, 2020

American Vapor worked with a handful of other companies to make the change-over.

For the sanitizer, the Pflugerville-based company worked with Smithville-based Bone Spirits Distillery.

For the labels, Georgetown-based Roberts Printing made the first 5,000 overnight for American Vapor.

The e-liquid company is not the only one in Texas working on this, according to Jay Maguire, who helps run the Texas Vapor Coalition as executive director.

“We have five big manufacturers in Texas that are doing exactly the same thing as you see here," Maguire said. "These companies have deep supply chains in China."

According to Maguire, the following labels are also helping with hand sanitizer production:

Naturally Pure in Pflugerville

Hometown Hero in Austin

Cloud 9 Mfg. in Seguin

Vapor Bar Mfg. in Katy

Savage Vape Mfg.

If you would like to order a bottle of hand sanitizer, you can do so on the Naturally Pure website.