GLENMORANGIE has acquired the mothballed Ardbeg distillery on Islay from Allied Distillers for #7m and intends to reactivate it.
Managing director Peter Darbyshire said he planned to invest about #500,000 in restoring the distillery to full working order by August.
The purchase price, to be paid in instalments over three years, consists of #1.6m for the distillery and its assets and #5.4m for bottled and vatted stock.
Glenmorangie already owns a flagship distillery at Tain in Easter Ross, producing a smooth flavoured Highland malt whisky and the Glen Moray distillery on Speyside.
Mr Darbyshire said Ardbeg will give the company a niche for the first time in the Islay whisky market.
But he said there was no danger of Ardbeg stealing market share from Glenmorangie since the two malts were at opposite ends of the market catering for entirely different tastes.
''If you take Glenmorangie as being one end of the spectrum, the lightest and most delicate of the Highland malts, Ardbeg is absolutely the other end, the most pungent and the most peatiest of the Islays,'' he said.
''Ardbeg is the strongest tasting of all the Islays and that is the great attraction for us.''
Mr Darbyshire said the reactivation of Ardbeg would create about 10 extra jobs in Islay in the short term and perhaps more in the future. Allied mothballed the distillery in July and predicted then that it would remain closed until at least the year 2000.
Glenmorangie conservatively plans to market 5000 cases of Ardbeg malt this year, rising to 30,000 or 40,000 in 10 years time.
This rather modest output will be aimed mainly at the UK, US and duty-free markets.
Allied Domecq said it had sold Ardbeg to concentrate on promoting malts from its nearby Laphroaig distillery. Laphroaig accounted for about 70% of Allied's overall sales of single malt whisky last year.
An Allied spokesman said there were no plans to
sell any more of the
group's 12 remaining
whisky distilleries, but Allied was close to
finalising the sale of its Robert Kilgour maltings in Kirkcaldy to a firm called Munton's.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article