The Lakes Distillery has re-registered as a public company weeks after announcing it was mulling an IPO on AIM.
The company is now The Lakes Distillery PLC, which the brand’s chairman Nigel Mills told The Grocer was “just another milestone that we’ve achieved on our journey to floatation”.
The move has grown the number of shares in the company from 4.6m to over 23m, reducing the nominal value of each from 10p to 2p, results filed with Companies House this week reveal.
The brand is seeking to raise substantial capital to fund its ongoing growth - although Mills stressed an IPO may not be the only way to do this despite having re-registered.
“We still have plans A, B and C,” he said. “Re-registering as a PLC has allowed us to improve our credit rating, and it also has allowed us to create some distributable reserves. Whichever option we do finally go down, that move suits all.”
The brand, whose sales grew £1.3m to £4.3m in 2017 (although it posted a pre-tax loss of £937k), was “breaking new ground in terms of an English whisky distillery,” he added. “Our ambition is to create a global luxury whisky brand.
“To do that we need some serious capital behind us. And we are not afraid of selling equity to fulfil those dreams.”
It follows a highly successful crowdfunding drive late last year, which saw The Lakes Distillery smash its £1m target in under three days, offering up 2.21% of its equity to investors and valuing the company at the time at £44.3m.
It claimed a world-first this year with the launch of Steel Bonnets, a blended malt whisky made with English and Scottish liquid, which hit shelves in the summer (rsp: £65/70cl).
It also auctioned the first 99 bottles of its single malt whisky, called Genesis, earlier this year - selling the first bottle for £7,900 and breaking a world record for the highest amount paid for a whisky from a new distillery. The rest of the bottles sold for an average price of £900.
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