FDBusiness.com

Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal has officially opened a brand new bottling hall designed to cater for today’s luxury Scotch whisky and gin consumers during a visit to Renfrewshire. The Prestige Hall was completed last year as part of an annual £40 million investment in operations by Chivas Brothers, the Scotch whisky and premium gin business of Pernod Ricard. It was created to facilitate the hand-packaging of the company’s highest-value products, including those in the Chivas Regal, Royal Salute, The Glenlivet, Beefeater and Ballantine’s ranges, as well as some limited edition single malts.

The process in the Prestige Hall is much more hand-crafted, quiet and bespoke than in a typical bottling hall, drawing on the skills of specially-selected employees to ensure the highest possible standards to meet the specification expected by the expanding group of luxury whisky and gin consumers around the world.

Laurent Lacassagne, chairman and chief executive of Chivas Brothers, comments: “The Prestige Hall is a prime example of how we have evolved our business to ensure it is clearly aligned for the future. The long term prospects for premium Scotch whisky and gin remain very good and this investment will continue to help us appeal to discerning consumers all over the world with the very highest quality products.”

The completion of the Prestige Hall is part of a sustained programme of investment by Chivas Brothers in its operations. Other recent major investments have included the re-opening of its Glen Keith distillery in June this year, completing a 25% expansion in the company’s malt distillation capacity, and the £10 million expansion of The Glenlivet Distillery in 2010 – increasing capacity there by 75%. The company is also building a new distillery at Carron on the River Spey, to be completed in 2015.