International Beverage has completed a £4m upgrade at Balmenach.
Founded in 1824, a few miles from Grantown-on-Spey, the distillery has invested in an integrated system of green technology at the site, which produces nearly three million litres of alcohol per year for the company’s own blends, as well as the blended Scotch market.
It is also home to the company’s Scottish gin Caorunn.
At the heart of the project is a new anaerobic and aerobic digestion (AD) plant, which uses micro- organisms to break down the liquid co-products of whisky production - pot ale and spent lees - allowing them to be processed on site.
This process produces clean bio-methane gas which feeds a combined heat and power (CHP) engine to generate power for the distillery and the grid, integrated with an existing biomass boiler which uses locally-sourced wood pellets to produce zero-carbon steam for the system.
Having paused the development during the pandemic, the site is now fully operational, and is having an immediate impact in terms of significantly reducing the distillery’s overall carbon footprint.
Each day, approximately 130m3 of whisky co-products are processed to produce 2,000m3 of clean bio-methane gas which feeds the CHP engine to generate renewable steam. This meets 100% of the distillery’s energy requirements, producing 30,000kW of energy per week, 25,000kW of which is used to power the site - with the remaining 5,000kW exported to the grid.
This has resulted in a reduction in distillery energy use from 7.8kWh to 6.8kWh per litre of alcohol produced, along with a reduction in Co2 emissions from 1.5kg to 0.5kg per litre of alcohol produced.
The system also cleans and returns 40% of processing waters back to the distillery’s watercourse, the Cromdale Burn, which is a tributary of the River Spey.
There has been a reduction in the need for heavy goods vehicle movement at the site too, removing 12 tankers from Spey Valley roads every week.
The Balmenach project is International Beverage’s biggest investment in sustainable whisky production to date.
It represents a major step forward in meeting the company’s commitment to use only renewable energy for production by 2040. The business no longer uses heavy fuel at any of its sites and reduced energy consumption from 11kWh per litre of alcohol in 2005 to 6.4kWh in 2022.
Group distillery manager Sean Priestley explained: "At IBHL there is a culture of genuine accountability for the environmental impact of our production process, which means we have been striving for cleaner, greener whisky production many years ahead of the current Scotch Whisky Association’s sustainability target of net zero by 2040.
"The system we’ve built at Balmenach has been challenging, but a combination of investment, innovation, partnership working and perseverance are paying off, resulting in the significant reductions we are able to report in emissions and energy use today, which will only increase over time."
International Beverage managing director Malcolm Leask added: "This is one of the industry’s oldest distilleries and it wasn’t built for efficiency.
"But nearly 200 years on, the improvements we are seeing in terms of energy use, emissions and efficiency show just what is possible in sustainability at such a historic site."
Established in 2006 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thaibev, International Beverage operates as its international business arm, specialising in the development of premium local spirits for the global market.
Based in Hong Kong, with regional offices in Singapore, Malaysia, the US and UK, the company is responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of a portfolio of brands in over 85 markets. These include single malt Scotch whiskies Old Pulteney, Balblair, anCnoc and Speyburn, along with blended Scotch Hankey Bannister and dry gin Caorunn.
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