Let The Drink Talk

[elsmore]

Brannan pledges £100m investment to revive whisky brands

By Ken Symon, Business Editor

Whyte & Mackay, the privately owned distiller is to invest £100 million to restructure the business over the next two years.

Bob Brannan, the managing director of the Glasgow-based company revealed the investment figure in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Herald business.

The investment is being used to revitalise and reposition the company’s five main brands, improve the company’s international distribution network and centre its bottling operations on an expanded site at Grangemouth.

The first of the brands to be revitalised will be the Isle of Jura malt which was revealed to the trade at the Whisky Live event in Glasgow on Friday.

Efforts to improve the brand, which include new bottling, have seen marked improvements in the volume and value of its sales.

The eponymous Whyte & Mackay brand is the next to be revitalised and repositioned by Brannan and his colleagues. The new look blended whisky bottle will see a return to the spirit of the traditional W&M bottling before the departure of its current blue label which also saw the dropping of the spirit’s traditional twin red lions logo.

Brannan said that in places around the world the brand was known as the two lions and that the change in labelling and packaging had actually lost the company sales. The company is also moving towards heftier bottles and classier packaging.

Brannan said that Whyte & Mackay will be marketed as “the whisky that Scots drink”. This is a reference to the fact that the blend is the third-largest seller in volume – behind Bells and The Famous Grouse – in the on trade in Great Britain and the second-biggest in Scotland, after Grouse.

Brannan said that building a whisky brand was a long-term business and that getting the main W&M brands to where he wanted them to be was expected to take a decade.

He said: “I am very passionate about brands, about consumer businesses and consumer brands growth.

“In this industry, it’s all about investment and shoe leather to get the story out.”

Brannan was speaking in his first in-depth interview since taking up his md’s role on March 1.

The former William Grant director was brought in by Vivian Immerman who took control of the group in a financial restructuring which was backed by £135m of debt funding by the Bank of Scotland.

When Brannan’s appointment to the post was announced, a company spokesman promised a year of “intense” activity and so it is proving.

11 September 2005

from: http://www.sundayherald.com/51668