BrewDog to expand brewery but 'we're still tiny'

BrewDog, the Scottish brewer and pub operator, has announced expansion plans, including a new 300hl brew-house at its headquarters in Ellon, near Aberdeen.

The company is planning a new 4,500sqm building adjoining its current building, which it hopes will be operational by the start of 2016.

It said work is due to start at the end of this year. Announcing the plans on its website the company said even with new tanks arriving, it was likely to be at capacity by the end of 2015.

It described the vision as an “eco-friendly, high-tech Ellon BrewDog HQ” with a new tank farm on the sites.

The company also claimed to have “some pretty amazing plans on the bar-side of things with more BrewDog bars in the UK & overseas planned, plus more BottleDogs and a few new concepts thrown into the mix too”.

It said: “This will be a huge and massively exciting project and by far the biggest and most ambitious project we have ever undertaken. Our new plans will see us make significant investments in the next 18 months – every single penny of this spend will be completely dedicated to helping us make the best beers we possibly can with all the technology focused on maximising taste, flavour and the beer drinking enjoyment of our phenomenal customers and our equity punks.

“It is also important to note that, despite the new expansion plans, we are still tiny. We are still less than 7% of the size of Sierra Nevada and still just a fraction of the size of the likes of Lagunitas, Stone, DogFish Head and Victory. BrewDog is currently 0.046% of the UK beer market, meaning that just one in every 2,200 beers drunk in the UK is a BrewDog beer. We can grow 10 times our current size and we will still be less than 0.5% of the UK beer market.

"We are absolutely tiny in the context of UK beer consumption overall, and we are determined to grow and also expand the craft beer category to get as many people as we can to share the passion we have for craft beer.”