PRODUCTION TEAM’S DISTILLERY UPDATE

by Findlay Ross, Director of Production

It’s a recurring theme from myself when writing these updates, but the first six months of this year have flown in! We restarted in January, as usual, by firing up the Maltings and the Still House at Springbank – both with minimal issues, thankfully, after being silent since late December for our Christmas and New Year break!

Our three stills will be sent for refurbishment at the end of this production period, so we are hoping that they all last until September before receiving their new lease of life when they are trucked up to Forsyths in Elgin for some much needed tender loving care.

Our Maltings received a bit of an ‘upgrade’ this year too, with a fine-tuned modulating burner being installed, which will be powered by Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). This will give our team far greater temperature control and the ability to produce more consistent and high yielding malt as a result.

Another area of improvement this year is changing the style of malt turners we use to ones that are lighter, quieter, and less prone to breakdowns – a project our Technical Support Coordinator, Ben Huysamer, has been working on with Assistant Production Manager, Robert McGarrie and the rest of the Malting Team.

We have experienced a far milder year so far, with late spring/early summer temperatures already exceeding the peaks of 2024, and this has presented a challenge to our Malt Team as they aim to keep germination temperatures between 16-20 degrees – this has been achieved by stretching out the malt floors and introducing some bigger floor fans to ensure a higher flow through of air.

We remain on track to hit our production target of 34 weeks of distillation at Springbank Distillery, having already made 181,400 litres of alcohol split between Springbank, Longrow, Hazelburn, and two separate types of Local Barley spirit from varieties grown at two different farms in Kintyre.

Our major capital expenditure project, the construction of a purpose-built Bottling and Dispatch Facility next to Glengyle Distillery, has progressed massively this year to the point where we now have something that resembles a building! We remain on track to move from our current Bottling Hall to the new building in March 2026, but there is still a lot of work to be done in the background with local contractors, McFadyens, to achieve this.

Overall, it’s been a very busy and successful first half of 2025, and we’re hoping for more of the same in part two!