Saints alive – it’s all change!
The Scottish Liqueur Centre is set for a new lease of life. Ian Buxton reports
Located at Bankfoot just off the main A9 north of Perth, the Scottish Liqueur Centre was for years a low-key part of the Scottish drinks business.
The family-owned company ran a small visitor centre; blended and bottled a pleasant but unassuming range of fruit liqueurs and produced Columba Cream liqueur, a modest competitor to Baileys.
That’s all about to change. Following a management buy-in in February this year the business is being transformed. New management is at the helm; the products have been reformulated and relaunched in striking new packaging; the visitor centre is being revamped and the scale of ambition moved up several notches. The target is a £5 million business within five years.
The new boys have come from Morrison Bowmore. Following management changes there in Autumn 2004, a complete team arrived at the Scottish Liqueur Centre and, with backing from the Morrison family, set about this dramatic remodelling.
The team is led by Kenny MacKay, former brands managing director at Morrison Bowmore. His new non-executive chairman is Brian Morrison and Rob Starling is export director. The team is completed with another Morrison, Brian’s son Jamie, as United Kingdom sales director. All the previous staff have stayed on and the new team are providing a sales and marketing drive to the business.
A bullish Kenny MacKay explains the changes thus: “I had been looking for the opportunity to do something privately and did not want to directly compete with my old .....
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By Ian Buxton
Section : Whisky Trends
Page number : 16
