Distilling His Entrepreneurial Spirit
After a decades-long career in the corporate world, Gareth McAllister struck out on his own and built Ahascragh Distillery on the ruins of an old Galway mill. Now with investors on board, he’s turning his attention to the lucrative Asian market, writes
Acorporate career can be very rewarding in terms of earnings, though with multinationals it’s often the case that you have to move around the world to progress. Then in middle age you may find that your employer has a new owner and that you have two choices: stick with the programme and get to know the new masters or jump overboard to try something new.
Gareth McAllister (54) chose the latter course of action. A few years ago, the chemical engineer returned to Ireland from Hong Kong with the ambition of starting his own whiskey business. His base of operations is the small village of Ahascragh in
Co. Galway, 11 kilometres north of Ballinasloe.
Ahascragh was established in July 2018 by Gareth McAllister and his wife Michelle, who moved west from their Portmarnock home in Dublin to oversee the development of their distillery.
Distilling whiskey doesn’t have to be complicated. All you need is copper stills to distil the alcohol and then some barrels where the alcohol matures into whiskey. The process can be effected in any industrial estate but the McAllisters decided their site should be a derelict mill in a rural village, which they have had to rebuild practically stone by stone and then repurpose to accommodate the distilling equipment and machinery.
Separately, and in the same village, the McAllisters have acquired abandoned shop premises, one for their office base and another for their whiskey warehouse.
Gareth McAllister insists there is method to their madness. “Developing the distillery in a business park would probably cost us half as much and we’d be up and running by now,” he says.
“But it wouldn’t be as nice to visit as what we have in Ahascragh. Hospitality is a big part of our mission, somewhere family and friends can celebrate meaningful moments and occasions. It’s not just about the liquid and the spirit — it’s also about creating a destination for people to come and see.
“When we came across the overgrown mill, Michelle described as a hidden Narnia. It’s a protected structure but the layout suits a distillery. The mill used to process grain into flour and now it’s going to process grain into a liquid.
“The mill had two large water wheels at one stage, and we are going to restore one of them. With the hydro, the mill was powered by sustainable energy, and that fits in with our own ethos to be sustainable and green in terms of power usage.”
McAllister is also chuffed about reinvigorating an ailing village. “There are dozens of villages in Ireland that have similar beautiful buildings that have been neglected. The distillery project has completely transformed Ahascragh, and it was the right thing to do. People will come to see this and talk about it.”
Gareth McAllister comes from a generation where the only option to find employment was emigration. He graduated from UCD in 1990 and says that all but two of his classmates had to go abroad to find work. He headed to Dusseldorf for a role with Henkel, who transferred him back to Cork when their plant was being built at Little Island.
His career subsequently took him to employment with American firms, with roles in Switzerland, France, and then Asia. “Most of my career has been abroad, not by choice but due to opportunity,” he remarks.
McAllister spent 12 years with American multinational Lord Corporation, rising through the ranks to the role of president of the Asia/Pacific division. Lord is a technology and manufacturing company that develops adhesives, coatings, and sensing technologies for industrial customers. In 2019, McAllister helped with the sale of Lord to US peer Parker Hannifin for $3.7bn, after which he checked out.
“I could have stayed on, or I could have gone elsewhere in Hong Kong in the corporate world,” he recalls. “I was 51, so we decided that this was the time to do something else or we’d never do it. Michelle is passionate about gin and I’m the same about whiskey, not just drinking it but everything to do with the business case study. I saw first-hand in Asia the huge opportunity for quality Irish spirits.”
The profit opportunity in making Irish whiskey is illustrated by the accounts filing for Great Northern Distillery for the year to April 2022. On turnover of €44.5m, GND booked an operating profit of €22.4m and a net profit of €18.2m.
Founded by whiskey veteran John Teeling, GND is a whiskey manufacturer and wholesaler that doesn’t sell its own branded whiskey.
Established in 2015, over the years Great Northern has invested €17m in plant and machinery and €22m on casks to transform raw alcohol into whiskey. Whiskey stock on hand in April 2022 was valued at €45m.
The large capital investment required by whiskey ventures is also evident at
Lough Gill Distillery in Sligo, a whiskey start-up that founder David Raethorne sold to New Orleans buyer Sazerac last year. Risk capital deployed at Lough Gill at the end of 2021 totalled €16.8m.
Gareth and Michelle McAllister gave up the expat life in Hong Kong to build a distillery in rural Galway
The Ahascragh project isn’t as ambitious as GND or Lough Gill, but McAllister will still require plenty of patient investors to fulfil his vision. The Ahascragh Distillers Ltd balance sheet for December 2021 shows €3.3m equity funding. Tangible assets capital investment at end 2021 amounted to €1.3m, with €1.1m spent on land and buildings. Stocks were valued at €550,000.
McAllister funded the venture with €1.35m of his own savings, in the form of a director’s loan. The company is
‘I saw first-hand in Asia the huge opportunity for quality Irish spirits’