Plans for the New Brewery and 2012 expansion unveiled
Invest in BrewDog at www.brewdog.com/equityforpunks -Our brewery and five new bars due to open in 2012 will be largely funded by investment from beer drinkers
We are excited to unveil our plans to build the world’s first fan-funded brewery in 2012 as well as opening five new craft beer bars across the UK. Planning permission for a new £6.5million low carbon brewing facility in Aberdeenshire has already been submitted, following investment of over £1.5m from beer drinkers across the world through Equity for Punks.
We have grown by over 200% in 2011, and through the investment of craft beer drinkers all over the world in Equity for Punks we are planning on exceeding that growth in 2012. The new facility will give us much needed brewing capacity, to help meet the growing global demand for our beers.
The new brewery will now be at Balmacassie as opposed to Pottorton as originally intended, there is less than 8 miles between the 2 locations.
In the end it just got too difficult and would have taken far too much money to get the utilities we needed to the Pottorton site and get the detailed planning permission to develop a green field site. Despite working on the project for 2 years, it would have taken at least 2 more years to get a building there. Furthermore it was going to cost in excess of £2.5m to get water, gas, electric to the site and to treat and dispose of the effluent water.
With the new site, we save money as the utilities are in place and we aim to have the new brewery online by October 2012, the project will be the same with the same environmental focus, just on a slightly different field.
We already own the site at Balmacassie having completed a deal last week, and the planning application has already been submitted. We also bought the adjacent field here – a total of 3.6 acres. Initially we will only develop one of them, leaving the adjacent one as a field until we need extra space at which point we will develop it, meaning we have loads of room to grow at the new location.
We still own the Pottorton land and we are going to use it to grow our own malt (a local farmer will help us!) and some soft fruits for a special ‘BrewDog Estate’ beer to be released once per year. It is a pity the original site did not work our; c'est la vie. Some projects come off and some don't. We felt it was much better to look at it objectively and do what is right for the business than cling to a project due to the fact we invested a lot of our time in it. At Balmacassie we can build an equally awesome, eco-friendly brewery but we can do it much quicker and provide better value for our shareholders by doing so.
The new BrewDog brewery will house state-of-the-art, energy efficient craft brewing equipment and will create 25 new jobs immediately, rising to over 75 during the next five years.
Some Stats on the new facility:
- An initial 3000 m2 brewery will built on the 3.6 Acre Site
- The new brewery will have an initial capacity of 100,000 HL per annum, expandable to 500,000 per annum
- 4 Vessel 100HL Brewhouse with a heat recovery system
- We will take our 27 existing fermentation tanks
- Add 10 new 400HL FV tanks (and we have plenty space for more)
- A new bottling line
*note this is just half of the building above. Warehouse and bottling hall not shown.
The offices are being designed by the super cool CM design scamps who do all the interior design for the BrewDog bars and are going to be fitted out in the same industrial, utilitarian way with reclaimed materials and used furniture.
We also plan to invest £1m to grow our bar division over 2012.
BrewDog Newcastle will be at 16 Dean Street (above). We have recently concluded a deal for the premises and hope to start work soon. Work is just about to start on BrewDog Camden (below) and we hope to be open by the 10th of December just in time for a Hoppy Christmas. These will be our 4th and 5th venues adding to the success of BrewDog Aberdeen, BrewDog Edinburgh and BrewDog Glasgow.
All this is made possible by Equity for Punks investments. This is a facility and new bars you will all own part of, we hope you enjoy being part of this as much as we like having you onboard. Give yourself a pat on the back and have a Punk IPA, you deserve it.
For those who still want to invest, visit www.brewdog.com/equityforpunks to buy part of BrewDog from £95
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