EDINBURGH beer firm Innis & Gunn has acquired craft brewer Inveralmond for £3.1 million.
Inveralmond, based in Perth, was founded in 1997 and is the brewer of beers that include Lia Fail, Thrappledouser and Fair Maid as well as its Inspiration Series – Sunburst, De Mons and Rascal London Porter.
Innis & Gunn’s range includes Innis & Gunn Original, Innis & Gunn IPA and Innis & Gunn Lager. The firm also owns two Innis & Gunn Beer Kitchen bars, in Edinburgh and Dundee.
Innis & Gunn has claimed the £3.1m was raised through its BeerBond crowdfunding programme, which launched last year. It now plans to invest “substantially” to increase production capacity at Inveralmond in order to produce both companies’ beers at the Perth site.
Moving forward, the Perth brewery will be renamed the Innis & Gunn Inveralmond Brewery.
“The acquisition of Inveralmond gives us the dedicated brewing facility that we need to meet the growing demand for our beers. It gives us a home where we can innovate and experiment with some of the new brewing processes we’ve been dreaming up,” said Innis & Gunn founder Dougal Sharp.
“This is more than an Innis & Gunn brewery; we’re building a totem for innovation and a launch pad for our continued expansion at home and abroad.
“We’ve been friends with Inveralmond for years and I have huge respect for the beers that they make. Ossian, their lead beer, is available on draught at all of our Beer Kitchen bar restaurants and sells brilliantly because of its amazing flavour, clarity and consistency.
“As we searched for a site for our new brewery, it became clear there was an opportunity to combine the strengths of both businesses and for us to acquire their brewery and brands.
“Taking over an already fantastic brewery gives us a rolling start in the development of our new state-of-the-art equipment and processes, meaning we can grow much faster than if we started from scratch. It means we’ve avoided a lot of the red tape and planning issues around building a site from the ground up and we can concentrate on what we do best – brewing beer.”
Inveralmond founder and managing director, Fergus Clark, added: “To me this feels like a real win-win. Our Inveralmond beers will gain access to a sales and distribution infrastructure that will massively accelerate the growth of our beers both at home and Internationally, while at the same time Innis & Gunn gets the brewery they want 18 months earlier than if they had to build it themselves. We are really looking forward to starting to brew Innis & Gunn beers on site and seeing where this exciting stage of our combined development will lead.”
