BrewDog has increased its manufacturing capacity at its Fraserburgh brewery and beer production has gone up from 450,000 bottles in the first half of 2008 to 1.4m bottles in the first half of 2009.
BrewDog’s 26 year old founders, James Watt and Martin Dickie, have signed deals with two Scandinavian distributors, meaning Sweden now overtakes the UK as BrewDog’s largest market – 27% of BrewDog’s production is shipped to the country, whilst the UK market makes up 25% and the US follows closely at 23%. The company, which employs 18 full time staff, now exports to 15 countries after entering the Russian, Portuguese and Norwegian markets for the first time this month.
Beer brands include Punk IPA (which makes up 55% of BrewDog’s outputs), Trashy Blonde, Paradox and Dogma.
To cope with demand in the short-term, BrewDog has invested in two new fermentation tanks which will take the company’s output from the current 2m bottles per year to 3.5m.
The brewer is also planning a new £2m green brewery just north of Aberdeen which, if planning permission is granted, will increase output to 25m bottles per year.
James Watt, BrewDog founder said: “The rest of the UK beer market is far from a picture of health at the moment, however we’re standing steadfast in defiance of this decline. We are determined to set ourselves apart from the stale UK drinks market by making high quality beers with fresh, natural ingredients.
“When we started the business two years ago, UK consumers were completely constrained by lack of choice in the beer market and it was easy to be seduced by monolithic brewers with huge advertising budgets. Our business is based on providing an alternative to these bland, tasteless and chemical-filled beers. BrewDog has expanded enormously over the last year and our uncompromising expansion plans will ensure we continue to revolutionise the market even more.”
