A SCOTTISH brewery plucked from liquidation two years ago has marked its turnaround with a string of overseas deals and a contract to supply 320 branches of the Nisa convenience store chain in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Bridge of Allan brewery was set up as an offshoot of the Queen's Hotel in 1999 but went bust in 2005, blaming over-ambitious expansion plans.
Scottish entrepreneur Graham Coull, who made his millions from selling his Pinnacle mobile phone ret
ail chain and owned Stiffy's Shots alcopops brand, stepped in and snapped it up for an undisclosed sum.
He rebranded the brewery Traditional Scottish Ales and has since reversed its fortunes. In its first 12 months to the end of February 2007 it achieved a turnover of £300,000 and Coull says it will touch £500,000 in the past year.
Both Traditional Scottish Ales and Stiffy's Shots are now part of umbrella firm VC2, based in Throsk, Stirling, which was unveiled at the turn of the year. It is run by Coull and joint managing director Carlo Valente. The company also sells Paris Rose, a strawberry cream liqueur, and Boe Superior Gin.
Coull said he wants to see group turnover rise from £1.3m to £2.3m, and is targeting £5m in three years. It has 12 staff, including a brewery manager.
VC2 has a distribution deal with Tesco to sell its five premier bottled beer drinks: William Wallace; Lomond Gold; Glencoe; Ben Nevis and 1488, a whisky beer. It supplies cask premium beer to JD Wetherspoon and Belhaven.
Coull said: "In the last six to eight weeks we've starting putting our beer in 330ml bottles, rather than just 500ml and this has really boosted our export business.
"We've had orders go to Switzerland, Singapore and Holland. We're currently in discussions with a potential customer in Russia who may take our 500ml bottles.
"It's hard to compete with big brands, such as Diageo, in overseas markets but we can live off the crumbs from the business those brewers don't want or don't get. The UK still makes up 80% of our business but the amount from abroad has grown over the past three or four months."
However, Coull admits there are serious issues to deal with in the market, including a shortage of glass and the spiralling price of raw materials.
He said: "One of major headaches right now is short supply of glass and other brewers and distillers are saying the same.
"We can't get enough glass to meet demand because of the volume going to newer markets, such as China and India.
"Only a finite number of factories produce glass and until more are built this will be an ongoing problem. The cost of cereal is another problem, particularly with beer. Increased supply costs of 10% to 15% can't be passed on to consumers."
The full article contains 481 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
