THE Scotch whisky industry is in a dynamic phase with major consolidation amongst the big players but also some strong ambitions amongst the smaller fry.
Speyside Distillery Company has just taken on Graham Taylor, 43, as managing director from the privately-owned Glen Catrine blending and bottling group in Ayrshire.
He will be in charge of a company which exports to 57 countries, had a turnover last year of #8m and is set to move to over #10m in 2001.
Speyside is now looking for acquisitions and has the financial firepower to back its ambitions.
These could include either distilleries which are currently mothballed or else are still operating in a market where long-standing sales arrangements may soon be in jeopardy following the Pernod Ricard purchase of the Seagram whisky business.
Amongst those distilleries which are mothballed are the Fortune Brands (Jim Beam) owned Tamnavulin and Tomintoul, both at Ballindalloch in Banffshire, and Tullibardine in Perthshire.
Speyside was originally started by George Christie in 1955 as a bottling and blending company based in Rutherglen and now employs around 100 people.
However, it was sold to Scowis, a Swiss investment group, in 1986 which built a new distillery at Tromie Mills near Kingussie.
Distilling began in 1990 with an annual capacity of 600,000 litres, putting it very much at the lower end of the production league.
Scowis sold out last year to a consortium of investors who were all customers and so had
a strong professional and personal interest in increasing its prosperity.
The purchase was engineered by Ricky Christie, son of the original founder, and Sir James Aykroyd, the chairman, who has spent a lifetime in the drinks industry.
The other major players are Ian Jerman, whose early experience was with the Hill Thomson blending group taken over by Seagram, and Rolf Andersen, who cut his teeth in rum distilling in the Caribbean before moving to Hublein in the US before branching out on his own.
Christie, who heads international sales, said the Speyside production was intentionally limited.
There were risks in over-production and also the heavy costs of financing maturing stocks.
Until now, about a third was sold to third parties for blending while other volumes went to the supermarkets as own label brands and to the independent wholesalers. Italy was a good market for the Drumguish eight-year-old vatted malt which is produced at Speyside, he added.
But on December 12 last year, the company celebrated the tenth anniversary of its single Highland malt.
The Speyside now gives it the credibility to launch the brand internationally as a 10-year-old. Only 10,000 nine-litre cases will be sold this year, of which 5000 cases have already been pre-sold into the US.
To help plan the age profile of future stock requirements, Speyside has recruited former Macallan managing director Willie Phillips as a non-executive director.
His crucial task will be estimating how much of the whisky should be retained in-house to provide security of supply and how much can be sold to other distillers on a reciprocal basis for blending. Christie said yesterday that the UK is one of the most difficult markets in the world for Scotch but Speyside did need a presence in the home market.
However, there is a growing and knowledgeable market for single malts with character which has been underlined by the recent decision by the Murray McDavid whisky broking house to re-open Bruichladdich on Islay.
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