Last year there was speculation that the plant would close because Pernod’s £5 billion acquisition of the bulk of Allied Domecq’s spirits portfolio had created spare production capacity.
However, Chivas has now upgraded Newbridge with an automated tissue wrapper, cartoniser and case packer for Glenlivet, the first in a Scotch bottling plant.
Chivas’s Glenlivet brand, which has been distilled in Speyside since 1824, recently overtook Campari’s Glen Grant to become the world’s second biggest-selling malt. Some 500,000 nine-litre cases are sold annually, making it second only to Glenfiddich.
Sources close to Glasgow-based distiller Whyte & Mackay last week dismissed talk that it was about to succumb to a £460m takeover from Vijay Mallya’s United Breweries. “I think Mr Mallya is flying a kite,” said the source.
Bob Brannan, Whyte & Mackay’s managing director, would not comment specifically on the takeover talk, but said that the owners, Vivian Immerman and Robert Tchenguiz, “are in a five-to-10-year programme of building this business for the long term”.