Pioneer who revolutionised malting for distillers

Oliver T Griffin, who died on April 6, aged 84, played a leading role in the remarkable expansion of barley cultivation in Scotland.

The switch from oats to higher-value malting barley, which started more than 50 years ago, transformed the profitability of Scottish arable farming.

Oliver was one of the four founders of Moray Firth Maltings, now Bairds; indeed it was his brainchild, said his former colleague Hugo Page Croft.

He went on to develop malting plants in Arbroath and Inverness.

Born in Buckhirst Hill near Epping, Essex, he took his BSc in bio-chemistry followed by a masters in malting and brewing at Birmingham University.

He convinced the local breweries to supply the brewing school with beer for “research purposes”.

The sample room became an important destination and some research may even have been achieved.

Oliver joined R&W Paul, Maltsters of Ipswich, from university, as technical and research manager.

His forceful personality and mercurial and incisive mind rapidly made their mark.

The malting industry was expanding and transforming from its centuries-old floor-malting heritage to industrial scale. He relished this change.

He developed static malting and Pauls built a 10-vessel plant at Mendlesham in Suffolk.

This single-vessel malting system dried enormous quantities of barley rapidly and cheaply.

Oliver immediately recognised the system’s potential for areas with wet, late harvests. After further research he proposed Pauls build a plant in the Moray Firth area to serve malt whisky distillers’s expansion.

Pauls declined but Oliver pushed on and with three colleagues he left Pauls to set up Moray Firth Maltings (MFM).

Within 17 months they had raised the money, bought the land, achieved planning consent and designed and built the maltings in Inverness.

The first barley was delivered to the half-built maltings in August 1968 from Hopeman, Morayshire.

That same year, his child, Alice, was born.

The company dried and stored 8,000 tons of local barley that harvest; malting started in December 1968 and the first malt was delivered to International Distillers and Vintners Ltd in January 1969.

MFM expanded rapidly in Arbroath, Turriff and Grantham, Lincolnshire; in 1999 it merged with Hugh Bairds to become Bairds Malt Ltd, now Scotland’s leading maltster and barley buyer.

Bairds is currently investing more than £40 million in another major expansion to the Inverness maltings and £10m in a major upgrade at Arbroath.

He promoted his schemes with vigour; he was not a man to take no for an answer, said Mr Page Croft. first

His technical prowess meant MFM were leaders in the production of specialist malt for the grain distilling market and also very heavily peated malts for the west coast and island malt distillers.

He also worked closely with the North of Scotland College of Agriculture on trialling and testing new malting varieties.

In 1980 he stepped down as an executive director but remained an involved nonexecutive director.

In addition to his cattle herd at Flichity, Inverness, in 1981 he built Tore Mill at Inverness, later bought by North Eastern Farmers.

Always a trailblazer he started in 1983 a craft brewery named after Alice.

It was, however, ahead of its time. Later the beer orders and Gordon Brown’s favourable tax treatment of micro-breweries transformed the market.

Alice Brewery, however, was dismantled and shipped to Massachusetts where it was reborn, an early entry to the now buoyant US craft brewery revival.

After remarrying he started a new farm in Lincoln and moved on to organic beer production with Lincoln Green.

His daughter Alice said her father was extremely sociable, complex, quick thinking, lively and full of enthusiasm and maintained his love for going to the pub.

Oliver became a keen collector of silver. His application gave him expertise and he assisted Lincoln Cathedral in cataloguing, improving and organising their considerable collection.

He is succeeded by his first wife Rosemary and their two children, Alice and Daniel, and wife Christina from his second marriage and his two stepchildren, Alex and Robbie.

TRAILBLAZER: Oliver T Griffin has died aged 84.