Datapachelps distilleryto unifysystems
ENNISCORTHY-BASED Datapac, Ireland’s leading technology solutions and services provider has announced the implementation of a customised ERP solution for Walsh Whiskey Distillery.
The new system unifies Walsh Whiskey Distillery’s different departments, providing increased oversight and streamlining the company’s production and sales processes.
Located on the 18th Century Royal Oak estate in a €25m distillery in County Carlow, Walsh Whiskey Distillery is one of the leading independent whiskey distilleries in Ireland and the only independent distillery in the world to produce all three types of Irish whiskey - pot still, malt and grain –in one still house.
The distillery has the capacity to produce eight million bottles of its Writers’ Tears and The Irishman whiskeys annually, for export to over 40 countries globally.
Having experienced significant growth in recent years and with further major growth planned, the company was looking for a scalable ERP solution that could unify these different departments and manage everything from ordering ingredients to bottling and stock taking.
Datapac won the competitive tender process to install and manage a customised ERP solution, based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
Datapac’s solution meets Walsh Whiskey Distillery’s needs, integrating completely with its operations and archiving all of the data from the various stages of the production process. Advanced security and access management functionality makes this data easily accessible to anyone who needs it, while ensuring that it can only be accessed by those with the correct credentials.
Whiskey production is a very technical process, involving large and complex equipment; the largest of Walsh Whiskey Distillery’s giant pot stills has a capacity of 15,000 litres and weighs between four and five tonnes. As well as this, over the amount of time that it takes to produce whiskey (a minimum period of three years), a certain amount is lost from the whiskey casks through evaporation, and this quantity is known to whiskey distillers as ‘ the angels’ share’. As well as unifying the various departments that oversee various stages of the production and sales process, Walsh Whiskey Distillery’s new ERP solution had to account for quirks like this in the whiskey production process. The distillery said that with further significant further growth planned, it was looking for a modern system that would handle the end-to-end process, and Datapac successfully achieved this.