Nytt destilleri igen! nu på Shetland

[Benke Olsson]

Denna gången är det Shetlandsöarna som står på tur att få ett nytt whiskydestilleri.

Enligt en artikel i Sunday Herald http://www.sundayherald.com/43392, så tänker Blackwood Distillers starta det första whiskydestilleriet där någonsin.

Anledningen till att det tidigare inte har funnits något destilleri på Shetland, sägs vara bristen på korn men nu ska man alltså trots detta börja bygga i början av augusti. Det ska placeras 10 miles norr om Lerwick och kommer sannolikt att bli Skottlands nordligaste destilleri.

Priset per flaska ska endast behöva bli 26p mera, till största delen beroende på transportkostnader, då man tvingas skeppa både korn och färdig produkt mellan fastlandet och ön.

Det måste finnas pengar att tjäna på oss maltwhiskyvänner, när man kan gå iland med att starta upp det ena nya destilleriet efter det andra.

Bara det nu inte går för dem som det går för Kilchoman 8-[ .

[sirj]

Här är en länk till:

http://www.shetlandwhisky.com/

Deras egna hemsida har varit igång sedan en tid.

[zoomie]

Bara det nu inte går för dem som det går för Kilchoman 8-[ .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Berätta hur det gick för Kilchoman.

z

P.S. Kom ihåg, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings". D.S.

[Benke Olsson]

Berätta hur det gick för Kilchoman.

z

P.S. Kom ihåg, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings". D.S.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tja............

Hitintills, så har det ju inte precis gått enligt de ursprungliga planerna .

Man har skjutit upp både byggstart och "bryggstart" och det är väl ingen "snygg start" .

[Åke]

Trodde jag hade lagt ut en länk om montagejobben på Kilchoman tidigare, men det måste ha varit någon annan stans:

http://www.kilchomandistillery.com/news.asp?newsID=31

Åker till Shetland i maj och om tiden medger tar jag kanske en tur till platsen där man tänker sig destilleriet.

[zoomie]

Tja............

Hitintills, så har det ju inte precis gått enligt de ursprungliga planerna  .

Man har skjutit upp både byggstart och "bryggstart" och det är väl ingen "snygg start"  .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Håller med om att starten inte varit den förväntade. Dessutom har bristen på information varit synnerligen frustrerande, men som sagt det ser bättre ut än på länge.

MVH

z

[Åke]

Från dagens Scotsman:

Red tape delays launch of distillery

DOUGLAS FRIEDLI

PLANS to build the first legal distillery in Shetland have been put back by a year because of red tape and problems with the site.

Caroline Whitfield, the chief executive of Blackwood Distillers, aimed to have the distillery producing whisky this year.

Planning permission was granted by Shetland council in June 2004, but a survey found the original site was unsuitable.

Blackwood had to reapply for planning permission when the site was moved by 60 metres. New approval was granted in April, subject to 25 conditions, but Blackwood is still waiting for permission from the council's building control department and from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).

The company has been prevented from carrying out any building work this month to avoid interfering with the nesting season for birds. Substantial construction work is difficult in Shetland in the winter months because of the lack of light and weather conditions. As a result, the distillery is now not expected to be finished until July 2006.

Whitfield said: "We will be cutting the turf a bit later than we expected. We just have to sit and wait. The regulations are getting tighter and tighter, but I can't say I am annoyed. We are putting all the other bits in place."

The 25 conditions which Blackwood must meet include not taking water from a burn between March and August, and recording and preserving archaeological remains.

SEPA is carrying out a study into the dispersal of effluent from the distillery.

Whitfield admitted the launch of the company's flagship product would be delayed, but added that the business should survive the setback.

A pioneering spirit

DOUGLAS FREIDLI

dfriedli@scotlandonsunday.com

CAROLINE Whitfield is not your stereotypical distillery owner. Sitting in the trendy Hospital bar in London's Covent Garden last week, she has just wrapped up an interview with a gay lifestyle magazine and is about to fly to New York to talk to potential distributors. To be accurate, Whitfield is not a distillery owner - although she hopes to be one quite soon. Plans for Scotland's most northerly distillery have been delayed by red tape and other irritations.

But Whitfield is already a player in the drinks industry, exporting gin, whisky and cream liqueurs to 30 countries around the world through her company, Blackwood Distillers.

The proceeds will be used to finance Shetland's first legal malt whisky distillery. Which begs the question - if the gin and vodka generate cash already, why go to the trouble of building a distillery at the remotest end of the British Isles?

For Whitfield, the distillery is the whole point: "In the first place, the distillery is why people wanted to invest. They wanted a long-term rather a short-term return," she says. "It is important that we should have physical presence in the place where the brands are rooted because that is what consumers want nowadays. It also makes sense to balance risks by having different products on different timescales."

On the surface, whisky does not look like the most attractive industry to be in at the moment. Malt whisky distilleries lie idle while the bestselling brands are snapped up by global megagroups, exemplified by Pernod's takeover of Allied Domecq last month. But Whitfield, a cheerful, enthusiastic Canadian, is convinced that her project is a winner.

"There are a lot of places where the big companies have deals sewn up and you can't get in, but the world is a big place. The trade is nervous about the [Pernod] deal. They are saying 'we want choice', so the irony is that we benefit. The market is growing at 18%, and there is no excess capacity at the top end - we are it," she says.

Following spells in management at Hasbro, the toy company, and as a consultant to drinks giant Diageo, Whitfield visited Shetland in 2002 in search of a home. At the time she was living next to MI5's headquarters in London - an uncomfortable place to be in the wake of the September 11 attack on the US.

She came away with an idea. Shetland has never had a legal distillery, despite having the ideal climate and raw materials in the form of peat and water to make whisky. With consumers looking for something different, Whitfield reckoned a drink from the edge of nowhere would stand out from the bottles of 'Glenwhatever' on the supermarket shelves.

Now 40 and splitting her time between Shetland, London and the rest of the world, Whitfield has not found the going easy. She has raised the money she needs - £2m from private investors and £1.6m in government grants - but the company had to apply twice for planning permission. The need to avoid the breeding season for red-throated divers and wait for building control permission has effectively delayed completion until next year.

Whitfield refuses to complain about these hindrances: "You just have to work with the conditions you are given. The regulations are getting tighter and tighter, but I can't say I am annoyed. We are putting all the other bits in place," she says.

But a delay will not help when the prize is already years away. By law, Scotch whisky has to be matured for three years, so Whitfield will be unable to sell any until 2009 - and it will be 2016 before she can market a premium 10-year-old malt.

But she is philosophical, saying: "I don't see anything changing in the market which will mean this is no longer a viable idea. The delay may even help by putting off other potential entrants to the market."

Blackwood's non-whisky products - particularly its Nordic gin, which is slightly green in colour, and Jago's vodka cream liqueur - seem to have struck a chord in niche markets.

That is one reason why Whitfield was talking to the gay press last week. She says: "We have found that our products tend to be picked up quite early by groups who see them as stylish, innovative and different." Other early adopters of the company's produce include black South Africans, who like the fact that the drinks are untainted by any past associations.

But Whitfield is not driven by sentiment - she has just taken the tough decision to overhaul the company's slowest-selling product, its vodka, in export markets. She will not say exactly how the brand will be changed, except that the problem was that it did not stand out enough.

"It was the weakest performer in our portfolio and we had to do something quite radical with it. It will still be vodka, but should have a particular appeal in Latin American and Asian markets," she says. Another new product, a gin with an eye-watering alcohol content of 60%, will go on sale at the start of September. It will be marketed as Blackwood's 60, a reference to Shetland's latitude, and selected bars have been given the recipe for a Martini cocktail made with the spirit.

New export markets are opening up all the time. Until recently, Blackwood used a US distributor based in the north-east, but was unable to meet demand in areas such as California. Whitfield was in the US last week to whittle down a shortlist of three distributors who can supply both east and west coasts.

The next steps will be India and China. Despite the difficulties and potential low returns from emerging markets, it is clear that Whitfield has been bitten by the same bug as Royal Bank of Scotland's Sir Fred Goodwin. "Shanghai is like New York was 15 years ago. It is where the future is, and the same thing applies to India," she says. "Even if they are poor now the potential is starting to build in the metropolitan areas."

Vodka aside, the spirits business has been performing nicely. It recently started making a profit and sales are likely to hit £3m this year. The water, cream and herbs needed to produce Blackwood's drinks are sourced from Shetland and put together by a distiller on the mainland, whose identity remains a secret. All production will move to the islands once the new distillery is built.

There are likely to be more problems and challenges to come, but Whitfield gives the impression that she is looking forward to them. She says: "I have had more doors slammed in my face than I would probably want. Every day I find three things have happened by 10 o'clock, which some people would find intolerable. You don't get that in a large organisation, but that is part of the thrill."

AWAY FROM THE DAY JOB

Family: Husband, a barrister, and daughters aged two, six and eight.

Holidays: "I mix work and holidays. I take a couple of extra days at the end of every business trip and I usually take one of my daughters with me. This month's trip to New York is unusual as I will be taking my husband."

Car: "I can't drive. It is a handicap, a nightmare. But I walk quite a lot and I can skipper a boat."

Film: "I went to see Madagascar at the Garrison cinema in Lerwick the other week. It was great fun, my two-year-old daughter laughed all the way through. It was her first trip to the cinema."

Reading: "I have just been re-reading Louis de Bernières' magic trilogy, and am reading Harry Potter like everybody else. I am also a huge consumer of news - I read at least two newspapers a day and read the news online."

[Benke Olsson]

Fick Potstill´s nyhetsbrev idag.

Där står följande:

"Blackwood in Konkurs

Letzte Meldung von Walter Schoberts Whiskywatch:



Blackwood Distillery "in administration": Caroline Whitfield, die die Whiskywelt seit Jahren mit ihren Plänen in Atem hält, die Destillerie auf den Shetlands zu bauen, gibt bekannt, daß ihre Firma Insolvenz angemeldet hat. Begründung: Finanzierungsprobleme wegen ihrer Scheidung und des allgemeinen Zustandes der Kreditwirtschaft.



Damit ist endgültig davon auszugehen, dass wir keinen Nachschub mehr von den Produkten dieses Unternehmens wie Jago, Vodka und Gin erhalten werden."

Fritt översatt så går tydligen Blackwood distillery på Shettlandsöarna i konkurs.

På grund av ekonomiska problem . Tråkigt.

[Arve]

Litt overdrevet. Selskapet som er satt i konkurs er et selskap som er heleid av Blackwoods Distillers og heter Shetland Spirit Company. Dette selskapet skulle stå for organisasjonen av produksjonen av gin, vodka og likør (en produksjon som finner sted på fastlandet).

Rettighetene til disse sprittypene (som er å få på Systembolaget) ble i forrige uke "leid ut" til Blavod Extreme Spirits, som tar over markedsføring og slik - mot en royaltybetaling til Blackwoods Distillery.

Blackwoods Distillery hevder selv at de fortsatt skal bygge destilleri på Shetland.