Whisky warehouses prove a dram fine idea

PLANS for nine new whisky warehouses to be added to an island distillery look likely to get the go-ahead after a council officer recommended planning permission.

The proposal by the Ardnahoe Distillery Company for the addition to their distillery at Port Askaig on Islay are set to go before councillors.

The planned space would have capacity for 6,000 casks of whisky, each of them holding approximately 210 litres, per year.

A council planning officer has recommended that planning permission is granted by Argyll and Bute Council’s planning, protective services and licensing committee at its virtual meeting on Wednesday, October 20.

The officer said: “The proposal is to build nine near identical spirit warehouses to the northwest of the existing distillery and a dunnage warehouse beside the distillery and qualifies as a major application under the terms of the Hierarchy of Development (Scotland) regulations by virtue of site area.

“A new circuit road system will serve all the warehouses and connect to the existing distillery roads and to the main road. Surface works for drainage, rock removal and levelling of the site and further landscaping are also in the proposal. The proposal is to develop a natural part of the wider distillery curtilage for land use.

“An exceptional case was presented demonstrating this as an appropriate site. In the absence of a large warehousing facilities which may be used island wide the options tend to be on site storage, shared storage and transport to the mainland.

The officer added: “Overall capacity at most existing warehousing is, or is close to, being reached. The option of mainland storage is deemed to increase traffic with what may be unnecessary traffic movements compared to on-site availability.”