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Echlinville Distillery plans £5m malting site
Northern Ireland’s Echlinville Distillery will invest £5 million (US$6.1m) in the restoration of a former maltings to enable it to produce local barley at scale.
The Irish whiskey producer has purchased the Ards Maltings building, located just outside Newtownards in County Down, which will be refurbished for malting on site. Ards was once one of the largest malting houses in Ireland.
Based in Kircubbin, Echlinville said the restoration project would make it the only Irish distillery with the capacity to produce, malt, ferment and distil their spirit from field to glass.
The distillery team currently floor malt their barley on the distillery farm, but this project will allow Echlinville to malt barley on an industrial scale.
The £5m funding was provided by the Bank of Ireland UK.
Shane Braniff, owner of The Echlinville Distillery, said: “Echlinville was the first new distillery in Northern Ireland for more than 125 years when we received our licence and casked our first spirit back in 2013.
“We’ve always been proud of our roots here in the Ards Peninsula and we complete every stage of the production process from the ground up on site at our distillery, from growing and harvesting the barley on our family farm, right through to hand labelling and bottling the finest spirits that we produce.
“Irish whiskey is the world’s fastest-growing spirits category and locally we have a long history of quality whiskey production.
“The Ards Peninsula has historically been known as one of the finest grain-growing regions in Ireland, so it’s no coincidence that Ards Maltings was established at the northern end of the Peninsula, malting barley from the surrounding farms and becoming one of the country’s largest malting houses.”
Braniff said the site once provided barley to Guinness and Irish whiskey producers Bushmills and Comber. It was the former home of the Old Comber Whiskey brand, which was revived by Echlinville Distillery in 2021 after a 70-year absence.
Braniff said Ards Maltings will “play an important role in the future growth of the business”.
Echlinville Distillery previously invested more than £9m (US$11.7m) to expand its site and grow its brands globally.