Kingsland Drinks has partnered with Manchester distillers Manchester Still to create a new fermentation and distillation facility at its Salford base.
The move will give Kingsland – and its sister company Ten Locks – the ability to produce spirits, which Kingsland said marked “a major step forward” in its push to become a full-service drinks company.
The facility would be “focused on the development of premium, innovative spirits and non-alcoholic beverages that will appeal to mixologists, bartenders and consumers alike”.
It would enable both businesses “to meet the growing demand for contract distilling and collaborate with partners across the on and off-trade” to create bespoke brands, as well as a planned NPD pipeline, with the first launch under the Ten Locks brand expected to roll out later this summer.
The partnership “realises a desire we’ve had for some time – to create world-class spirits on home turf and present a true full-service offering to the industry”, said Kingsland Drinks chairman Andy Sagar.
It was “the coming together of two northern companies ready to firmly cement Greater Manchester’s growing reputation as a hive of innovation in the drinks industry”, he added.
Manchester Still CEO and co-founder Sam Rowley-Neale added the two businesses had “the ambition of developing a truly game-changing facility for the innovation, incubation, and development of Manchester/UK-based spirits, that in time will garner a global reach”.
It’s the latest in a series of investments into new categories and formats for Kingsland.
Last year, for instance, Kingsland ploughed a six-figure sum into upping its bag-in-box wine production capabilities by 50%, allowing it to pack more than 28 million litres of wine in the format per year.
It has also created a new laboratory “focused on future-thinking and insights-driven product development” and upgraded its capacity to bottle spirits and package “new and emerging formats”.
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