Brewdog has unveiled ambitious plans to boost its production tenfold with the construction of a new brewery just north of Aberdeen. The company – which last year leapfrogged Harviestoun as Scotland’s largest independent brewery – recently acquired a 3.2 hectare field at Potterton, between Aberdeen airport and Donald Trump’s Menie development.
Brewdog’s capacity at its current Fraserburgh site is 2m bottles per year. The new brewery — expected to cost between £3m and £4m — will enable Brewdog to increase this more than tenfold, taking it up to 25m bottles a year. It is likely to employ 25 people and 45 if it incorporates a bistro.
Martin Dickie, Brewdog’s co-founder and production director, said: “With new equipment and enough fermenters, and running 24/7 for five and a half days a week, it will give us a theoretical capacity of 25m bottles a year.”
He added that the new plant, expected to be up and running by late 2010 assuming planning permission can be obtained, will be the world’s first “carbon zero brewery”. The aim is for this new facility to be “zero carbon and zero effluent,” said Dickie, 26 who co-founded Brewdog with managing director James Watt in April 2007.
Dickie said the plant is expected to be entirely powered using onsite wind turbines and a combined heat and power biomass plant fuelled by spent grain from the brewery.
“A lot of the by-products of the brewing process are completely reusable,” said Dickie. “Spent grain can be used as cattle feed or fuel, spent hops can be used a cattle feed or compost and yeast can be used as fishfood.” He said there will be a reed bed at the rear of the brewery for the bio-treatment of waste effluent before this can be harmlessly returned to the water courses.
He seemed confident that planning permission can be secured since Aberdeen City Council last year launched an Energetica programme to transform this area into a green energy hub. Brewdog’s sales have been growing sharply in recent weeks as it signs up with new wholesale distributors, pub chains and supermarkets. They increased 450% in the first quarter of 2009, to 560,000 bottles.
There are also plans to build a visitor centre and bistro on the new brewery site, in the hope of creating a “Mecca” for Brewdog’s growing audience of aficionados. Its range of beers — which include Punk IPA, Paradox, Riptide, Hoprocker, 77 Lager and Trashy Blonde — is already sold in 11 countries worldwide.
Brewdog is also introducing Keykegs into the UK market following a successful trial of the environmentally friendly and disposable kegs for the US market.
Richard McLelland,, Brewdog’s head of UK sales and marketing, said: “We’re not just trying to sell more beer, we’re trying to sell beer more responsibly.” It is also looking to expand into the Irish off-trade and on-trade.
Brewdog is targeting sales of at least £1.5m in 2009 but once the new brewery becomes fully functioning in 2011, this could rise to £15 million.
An edited version of this article was published in The Sunday Times on 10 May 2009.