Leeds brewery Northern Monk smashes £500k crowdfunding target

Northern Monk Brew Co. surpassed its £500,000 target three hours after launching its equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube and has now raised almost £850,000 with the help of 1,373 investors.

The brewery launched the fundraising initiative at the end of last month, aiming to raise £500,000, with an additional option to raise up to £1 million. If the overfunding target (£1m) is reached, the brewery will be selling off a maximum of 10% equity, otherwise it will be parting with 7.8%, according to Good Beer Hunting.

Northern Monk, which was founded in 2013, reached its initial target just three hours after the campaign went live.

It has revealed that over the next two years, it plans to triple its production capacity, invest in a new canning line and build its own wild beer and barrel ageing programme.

Since launching with just £5,000, Northern Monk has seen sales rise by 300% in the last three years and is on target to brew three million pints this year.

In 2014, it opened its brewery and taproom at a Grade II listed mill in central Leeds. With two production sites and 30 members of staff, Northern Monk now sells its beers to 22 different countries.

With the initial £500,000 investment, the brewery will install eight 10,000-litre fermentation vessels as well as a new packaging line. With the extra money raised, it hopes to open taprooms in London and Manchester.

Russell Bisset, owner of Northern Monk, commented: “We’re blown away. We hit our target in less than three hours.

“We are hoping to overfund to £1 million, if we get to that level, we can start thinking about opening our tap rooms. If we can raise enough, our preferred option is a brewpub selling exclusively on-site in the capital”.

Northern Monk is not the only brewery to achieve crowdfunding success this year.

South London brewery Hop Stuff also exceeded its fundraising target, raising just over £736,000 from 997 investors. With this money it hopes to open six further taprooms over the next two years, increase international exports as far as Japan and install a new brewing and packaging facility.

It is also hoping to employ a further 70 members of staff across three new bars this year, the first of which will open in Ashford in Kent, also the site of Curious Brew’s new brewery.