Waste: A Game of Snakes and Ladders? : Distribution - Case Study
Creating a Blueprint for the Industry
With distilleries in some of the country's most beautiful and remote areas, the Scotch whisky industry has long been aware of its responsibility to the environment. Converting the by-product of whisky distillation into animal feed is by no means a new process. However, it is an expensive one, and with the drop in the cattle feed market in the last 20 years as a result of changing eating habits, it has become increasingly costly for individual whisky producers.
United Distillers took the first step in acknowledging that the scale of the problem required putting industry co-operation over company one-up-manship to find a solution.
United Distillers therefore invested in a new £7.4 million Dark Grains Plant at Glenlossie Distillery in the Moray district in Scotland. Here draff and pot ale from four separate companies in the area, with 11 malt whisky distilleries between them, is converted into dried and pelleted animal feed. The economies of scale achieved at a single plant that deals with the residues from a number of otherwise competing companies have created a financially viable animal feeds process.
The new plant is able to handle over four times the volume of the original plant and can produce up to 835 tonnes of dark grains per week - equivalent to the residues of 11 large distilleries - and is also much more energy efficient.
The result is a highly saleable agricultural product that can be sold at a competitive price to farmers both at home and abroad. Dark grains produced at Glenlossie are distributed by Trident Feeds throughout the UK and there is also a significant export trade to European markets (principally Belgium) which has brought extra business for the harbours along the Moray coast.
Says Alan Rutherford, Scotch whisky production director from United Distillers: 'By-product issues can be company specific, but the problem that we faced was clearly industry-wide. While United Distillers made the initial investment, the plant itself is a testament to successful industry co-operation. It has made a major contribution to the environmental balance of the area and is indicative of the Scotch whisky industry's continuing resolve to manage its by-products correctly.
