Innis & Gunn smashes crowd-funding

Scottish brewery Innis & Gunn have raised a £1 million more than its target crowd-funding campaign, as it brings its plans for English bars forward by a year.

The brewery has raised a total of £2.5 million in the Crowdcube campaign, it announced today, after smashing its original target in only 72 hours. The overfunding means that around 4.79% of the share capital has been sold, versus the original 2% intended, with 2012 investors now on board, it confirmed.

The company had been looking to accelerate its growth plans to open four new Beer Kitchen bars next year, but the additional funds will enable it to accelerate these plans and open a Beer Kitchen in England in 2017, a full year ahead of schedule, in addition to three planned in Scotland, and one in Toronto, it said.

Currently it operates three Beer Kitchens, in Edinburgh, Dundee and St Andrews, which opened earlier this month, and has plans on opening a further three in Scotland over the next 12 months in addition to its first international site, in Toronto, Canada.

Since being founded in 2003, the company has seen year-on-year volume and sales growth, with turnover hitting £12.5 million in 2015, up 36% since 2012. It is looking to double this to £25 million over the next three years, by ramping up production and adding a new barrel ageing hall and filtration technology to the Inveralmond brewery that it bought in April. Currently it sells around 23 million bottles of beer globally.

At the launch of the crowdfunding drive, founder and master brewer Dougal Gunn Sharp said the craft beer scene has been virtually non-existent when the company started in 2003. “Through perseverance, hard work, and outstanding beer, we have been able to play a key role in spearheading the growth of the movement in the UK and in turn build a successful international business selling our beers in over 20 markets,” he said.

Earlier this summer, Gunn Sharp told db the bars provide Innis & Gunn with the chance to trial potential new products on consumers, while the new brewery had formed part of a three-year plan to scale up production and treble the company’s output. Innovation was a key focus, however, with the newly acquired Inveralmond brewery acting as an “innovation hub” to develop new lines.