ARRAN Brewery has revealed it will launch a second round of crowdfunding to pay for its proposed development of a sake brewery in Ayrshire after running into costs on two major projects.

The company, owned by Gerald Michaluk, will invite existing shareholders to invest in the campaign, before extending the offer to the wider public around Easter.

Arran raised £260,000 in its first round of crowdfunding, after setting out its ambition to raise as much as £4.25 million in the long term using the alternative finance model.

It is confident the second round will take it over the £500,000 required for a project that will see it build Scotland's first sake brewery in Dreghorn, having secured planning permission for the project in January.

Plans for the five acre site include a training school, brewing and research centre, exhibition space, and Japanese cultural and food centre, as well as a bottling facility for its beer business.

The site will handle all of Arran's beer bottling and kegging operations, paving the way for significant savings as those operations are currently outsourced to the Burton in the Midlands.

Meanwhile, further funding is required by Arran after it ran into delays over its plans to fully open its Loch Earn brewery, hotel and visitor centre at St Fillans.

Arran said the project has been held up by delays securing building warrants and poor weather, and that it is carrying an additional overhead as it staffs up in advance of the brewery opening.

It said in a statement yesterday that it had secured a conditional loan with Bank of Scotland for the remaining £300,000 needed to complete phase two of the project.

At the same time, the business said profits have been dented after it was forced to walk away from plans to develop a distillery at the former Rosebank site in Falkirk.

Mr Michaluk maintains the plans were scrapped after the local council moved to classify the site as abandoned, causing Arran to lose out investor funding of £2 million, £500,000 of grant support from Historic Scotland and potential lottery funding.

Mr Michaluk said costs had also been exacerbate by Arran's move to set up a distribution hub in Texas, which has proven to be more expensive than previously anticipated.

In spite of the challenges, Mr Michaluk said he is optimistic Arran's various plans will pay off in the long term.

He revealed the business has scaled up staff by strengthening its sales team in the UK and Europe, and is looking to hire a finance director and recruit three non-executive directors in anticipation of growth. One of the non-executive directors will be recruited from its existing investor pool.

Mr Michaluk said: "We are strategically well set to benefit from all this investment in the coming years, especially once our own bottling line and warehouse comes on stream later in 2015.

"We now own a five acres plus site and significant infrastructure at Dreghorn and this will became the base for our move into the sake business and allow us to bottle our beer in-house on the mainland."

The update from Arran came as it said sales of its beers were running 11 per cent up in the first five months of its current year compared to last time. However specific sales values were not disclosed by the brewery.

Mr Michaluk added: "The brewery continues to grow and expand its horizons in a super growth market both here in the UK and internationally.

"We now have the brewing staff trained and are therefore confident that we can move quickly into production when the new facilities are open later in the year and significantly increase sales as well as reduce costs by moving from contract bottling on the mainland to in-house bottling at Arran View Brewery, Dreghorn.

"The space created on the island by discounting our bottling there will be used to increase significantly production capacity."