Bairds set to invest £50m in new malting facilities
A £50 million investment in new facilities at Arbroath and Inverness will allow an additional 100,000 tonnes of Scottish barley aimed at supplying the burgeoning distilling trade to be malted within the country by 2022.
And the focus of the move being taken by Bairds Malt and buying partner Scotgrain will be on supplying the whisky trade with a product which is “sown, grown and malted” in Scotland, providing a unique provenance to back up the marketing image used by many distillers.
Speaking yesterday at the first Scottish malting conference, which was organised by plant breeders Syngenta, Keith Headridge, commercial director of Scotgrain, said that while there was every sign the recent expansion in the whisky trade was set to continue, there had been little in the way of spending in the malting infrastructure required to service this in Scotland in recent years, other than the company’s previous £25m investment in Arbroath in 2010.
The company – part of the global Graincorp Malt Group – currently handles more than 200,000 tonnes of malt in Scotland for the distilling trade. However, despite the fact that the majority of the 900,000 tonnes of barley used by the distilling trade is grown in Scotland, other firms often take a considerable portion to facilities south of the Border for malting.
But Headridge said the move would do more than provide provenance: “Not only will we be supplying a quality product to the distillers but with state-ofthe-art processing facilities and local sourcing, the investment will mark a huge step forward as far as road miles and carbon footprint, adding considerably to the sustainability of the product.”
Admitting that the fortunes of the distilling trade were sometimes cyclical, he said volume contracts had already been agreed with distillers – but added that there had also been a step-change in how whisky was marketed recently.
He said: “The Scottish brand is highly important to the industry – and more and more the industry is looking to ‘premiumisation’ of their products.
“Increasingly this means selling into extremely high value markets abroad and while a minimum of three years maturing is required, increasingly the premium end is looking to laying them down for 15, 18, 21, even 40 years.”
This meant that an estimated 20 million casks of whisky were currently maturing in warehouses in Scotland.
“Being able to back such products up with proven provenance and sustainability will be an important factor in this sector.”
The meeting also heard that malting barley producers in Scotland were likely to be better placed in an uncertain post-brexit trading world than those producing for global commodity markets.
Tracy Creasy, seed campaigns manager with Syngenta, said: “With a very strong internal demand for malting barley suited to the distilling trade, growers will not have to cope with some of the global issues and complications which might hit other sectors through post-brexit trade deals.
“And as there is a possibility that imported grain might become more expensive, the question might be can we produce enough to meet home consumption?”
She said plant breeders were working towards this end by producing new varieties with higher yield potential, as well as ensuring they were suited to the Scottish growing conditions.