TURNOVER at a Kelsall brewery broke £1m for the first time after it moved to new purpose-built premises.
Weetwood Ales, which started brewing in 1993, couldn’t keep up with demand for its CAMRA award winning beers at its previous site in Weetwood Common.
A £300,000 loan from The Co-Operative Bank was used to build a new brewery just half a mile down the road in Kelsall, buy new brewing equipment and finally create a new office.
The business completed the relocation with the opening of the new office just last month and since then, turnover has grown from £860,000 in 2011/12 to more than £1m in 2012/13.
And incredibly, sales for the first two months of 2013 were up 24% on the equivalent period a year earlier.
The brewery sells to 160 pubs across Merseyside and Wirral, Cheshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Derbyshire, North Wales, Shropshire and the West Midlands.
Directors Roger Langford and Adrian Slater employ eight people to produce 21,500 pints of ales every week.
Some of the beers on offer include Eastgate Ale, Old Dog, Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat and the multi award-winning Oast House Gold.
Adrian said: “Before moving we had grown to the point that we were so busy that we weren’t even trying to sell beer but people kept on approaching us and we were brewing seven days a week to keep up with demand.
“We bought the land ourselves but we needed to fund the building of the brewery, a new office and more brewing equipment so we approached The Co-operative Bank who were very supportive.
“We’ve now got so much space that we’ve been able to scale up by three times so whereas we used to produce 360 gallons per brew, we’re now producing triple that.”
Paula Brown from The Co-operative Bank added: “Weetwood Ales clearly had huge potential to increase its customer base but was prevented from doing so through lack of space.
“The new brewery will allow them to begin actively seeking out new customers and it has already made a significant impact on sales.”
