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Hensol Castle contract bottling turnover to double

The contract bottling arm of Hensol Castle Distillery looks set to more than double its turnover by the end of 2022.

Hensol-Castle-Distillery
L-R: Chris Leeke, managing director, and Dai Wakely, master distiller

Contract bottling accounts for 80% of the distillery’s revenue, and has doubled year on year since 2021. Excluding duty, Hensol Castle Distillery’s contract bottling generated £1.2m in turnover during its 2020/21 financial year (April-March).

This rose to £2.5m in 2021/22, and is forecast to top £4.3m by the end of 2022.

To meet the growing demand for the distillery’s services, Hensol Castle has signed a five-year lease on a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Talbot Green. This joins the company’s onsite bonded warehouse, which spans 18,000sq ft.

In total, Hensol Castle Distillery can store more than 3,000 pallets of finished spirits for its customers.

Chris Leeke, managing director of Hensol Castle Distillery, said: “Our contract bottling service has really taken off since we launched in 2019. We doubled our turnover in the last year and we’ve just reached the milestone of bottling our 2.5 millionth bottle.

“In order to keep up with demand, we’ve introduced a second daily shift and increased our staff to 37 full-time and five part-time across production, administration and accounting.

“Securing this additional warehouse space is key to our future growth as it means we can expand production greatly and store our clients finished product under bond, providing them with significant cash flow benefits. This enables them to order well in advance to get ahead of the industry shortage of glassware and the rising costs of production.”

Hensol Castle Distillery produces just shy of 900 different spirits SKUs, alongside more than 50 UK brand owners. These are distributed in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and France.

In September 2021, the distillery opened its visitor experience following a multi-million-pound investment.

The latest releases from the producer include a wild strawberry and hibiscus-flavoured gin, and a blood orange zest bottling.

Welsh spirits producer Cygnet Distillery moved its operations to Hensol Castle Distillery in August 2021.

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