Work has started on the new £10m Isle of Arran Distillery on the south of the island at Lagg.
The building will include a Visitor Centre and pot stills for distillation as well as the warehousing, which will allow enough capacity to increase production to 1.2 million litres.
Master Distiller James MacTaggart said: “Having been at capacity at Lochranza for some time, the prospect of starting production at Lagg is extremely exciting.
“The Arran Malt continues to grow in popularity – the extra storage alone will enable us to lay down more of the award-winning Arran spirit.
“I’m also very much looking forward to expanding our peated range. By moving production of Machrie Moor and concentrating the distillation of peated malts on the south of the island, I’ll also be freed up to create more of our extremely popular limited editions at Lochranza.”
Euan Mitchell, Managing Director at the Isle of Arran Distillery, added: “The past 21 years has seen the ‘Arran Waters’ flow around the world. We are relatively young compared to some other Scotch whisky distilleries and we have a fresh, dynamic approach coupled with big ambitions to introduce more people to top quality malt whisky.”
Construction at Lagg begins as the popularity of distillery visits reaches an all-time high. The distillery site at Lochranza welcomed record numbers of visitors in 2016 with over 104,000 people making the trip to the distillery. This number is expected to rise to a combined 166,900 by 2018 once the new visitor centre in Lagg has been opened.
Mitchell continues, “Visitors to Lochranza have been growing year-on-year making the Lagg site of even greater importance. By 2018, we hope to be extending the same warm welcome welcome on the south of the island that visitors enjoy at Lochranza.”
