Kingsbarns distillery: Your own whisky distillery

Did you ever want to own your part of a whisky distillery? This Kingsbarns Distillery crowdfunding is your chance right now.

Doug Clement, the founder of the proposed Kingsbarns distillery said:
“We are talking to several whisky industry players and potential funders from as far afield as Canada, China & South Africa but having seen the recent fundraising success of another proposed distillery on Crowdcube we thought it might work well for us too. Crowdcube will enable us to reach a much wider audience than the traditional investment community we have been focusing on thus far. Through their platform we hope to show the world the opportunity to become a part of our enchanting craft distillery at Kingsbarns by the home of golf, St Andrews. Since we launched on Crowdcube on Friday we have already received £110,000 of new investment which represents 6% of our fundraising target of £1.85 million so the initial signs are very encouraging.

What we are doing is filling the glaring gap in Scotland’s malt whisky geography both here in the Kingdom of Fife & Lowland whisky region itself. Our region is world famous for its golf and we plan to make it famous in the years to come for its Scotch Malt Whisky too!”

I have been asking Doug about the project as althought I think it is a very nice idea I see lots of black spots on the project.

What happens if you don’t reach the funding objective?
All monies are returned if we do not reach our fundraising objective of £1.85 within the 90 days although we may be able to raise finance on similar terms from sources outwith Crowdcube such as Scottish Enterprise

What gets the people crowd funding the project?
People crowd fund for many reasons. The main ones are that they see an opportunity to invest in something they are passionate about or that they find the rewards combined with the projected return on investment attractive. It enables a lot investors of any budget to get involved in projects.

Is this an investment? If so how long until people can see benefits
They would get an immediate return with the rewards offered, the possible financial return would take a little longer. Dividends could be payable from year 3 of opening and could increase substantially from year 7 when mature whisky is sold. The company could be sold at any time and indeed offers to buy the company have already been received.

How do you plan to “survive” until the first whisky is ready?
Through revenues from the visitor centre, sales of non matured spirits (gin, schnapps, liqueurs) and bought in whisky. Conservative projections show that the company should be cash positive from a very early stage

I understand this is a venture for a “small distillery” but what is the target pure alcohol production per year?
30,000 LPA per year with maximum capacity of 100,000 should demand be required.

I don’t know how are you doing on Scotland, but here on Spain there is a serious problem with unemployment and the future looks even darker. Are the visitors expectations in sync with these times we live?
Visitor numbers remain resilient here – the profile of typical visitors (golf and whisky) is very strong Whisky tourism and golf tourism is scotland and more in particular Fife is booming. There are 2.8 million visitor days to the home of golf St Andrews and its surrounding area and yet there is no ‘visitor’ distillery in our region Fife. With 8% of all tourists to Scotland visiting a distillery the potential for our craft visitor distillery at Kingsbarns is clear to see. Only a few minutes drive away is the Fairmont St Andrews Bay Hotel, the largest conference hotel in Scotland which was voted 2012 European Golf Resort of the Year and our region Fife was names “Golf Destination of the Year – Europe, 2012” at The International Association of Golf Tour Operators Awards. All the hotels and golf tour operators in the area have assured us once we are open they will send all their guests to us so our 25,000 visitor projections at £15 per head are very conservative and in a best case scenario we can expect 80,000 at £25 (the national average) per head

Here is the link of Crowdfund: http://www.crowdcube.com/investment/kingsbarns-distillery-10564

Apart of missing the rewards that I think it would be something like a discount on products or early access to whisky produced, what do you think about this venture?

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