Scotland’s Eden Mill buys namesake English brewery

Scottish brewery and distillery Eden Mill is set to more than double its capacity after acquiring the Eden River Brewery in Cumbria, England.

Eden Mill became Scotland’s first combined distillery and brewery in 2012

The acquisition of Penrith-based Eden River Brewery will allow Eden Mill to bottle and distribute “quickly and effectively” and will increase its capacity by 50,000 nine-litre cases, creating an additional 12 jobs at the plant.

Based in St Andrews, Eden Mill became Scotland’s first combined brewery and distillery in 2012. Since then, the group has “rapidly” grown its retail footprint.

Following the acquisition, Eden Mill will continue to distil its whisky and gin and brew its beer in St Andrews. The group released its inaugural range of single malts – the Hip Flask Series – in April last year.

“Thanks to a growth trend amongst our customer base and our ongoing partnership with big retailers such as Aldi, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, our acquisition of Eden River Brewery will allow us to drastically increase our production on many of our products,” said Paul Miller, co-founder of Eden Mill.

“Eden River Brewery is highly complementary to our business and we share commonalities in products and approach, making us hugely excited about our combined potential.”

Jason Hill, director of Eden River, added: “When we were approached by Eden Mill, I knew immediately that this was the kind of company, and the right team of people we could work with.

“We all had a vision of the quality products and identified that highlighting the ‘craft’ aspects of our products would allow for us to expand yet stay personal to our customers.”

Last year, Eden Mill submitted plans to build a new distillery and brewery located metres away from its current site in St Andrews.