DIRECTORS and staff at the Bruichladdich Distillery Company appear to have shared more than £5.2 million of bonuses and share gains when it was sold to Remy Cointreau for £58m, according to accounts filed at Companies House.

The financial statement, which covers a 15-month accounting period, shows in excess of £4.6m of share option gains were recorded with directors receiving £3.3m of that.

Average staff numbers at the Hebridean whisky maker during the year were 56 and there were eight directors prior to the Remy deal.

That suggests the average share based pay-out to staff below director level at the Islay business would be in the region of £27,000 although employees would have had different sizes of share holdings.

There was also an additional director and employee share bonus of £468,078 noted in the accounts which would give an average payment of around £8300 if divided equally across all staff.

Partly as a result of the payments staff costs increased from £2.2m to £8.1m with directors' emoluments growing from £687,661 to £4.3m including £156,250 of compensation payments for loss of office.

The highest paid director received almost £980,000, an increase from the £136,047 reported in the prior period.

The accounts show Bruichladdich booked turnover of almost £13m in the 15 months to March 31 this year, against £8.7m in the calendar year of 2011. UK sales in the 2013 trading period were close to £3.5m, while they were at £5m for Europe and £4.5m for the rest of the world.

All of those were up on the 2011 figures - £3m for the UK, £3.2m for Europe and £2.5m for the rest of the world - with Bruichladdich saying it had seen organic growth from its core brands as well as acknowledging contribution from the longer reporting period.

As well as the main Bruichladdich whisky the group makes peated versions under Port Charlotte and Octomore brands. It also produces The Botanist Gin. Key markets are said to be the UK, Canada, the US, France, Germany and Taiwan.

However exceptional items soared from £220,000 to more than £1m while sales and marketing costs doubled to £2m and administrative expenses rose sharply from £1.7m to £2.9m.

That resulted in the business reporting a pre-tax loss of £471,761, against a profit of £880,108 in 2011.

Net debt of £9.3m was wiped out by the Remy deal with Bruichladdich reporting a cash balance of £153,153 at the end of March this year.

Bruichladdich confirmed it is launching nine new single malts with a focus on the provenance of the barley used in the distillation.

Finance director Steven van Bokrijck said the new range will include a number of premium products which will help to return the business to profit.

In February this year Bruichladdich signalled it was going to 24 hour working for five days each week in order to increase annual production from 750,000 litres to 1.5 million litres. That is about 90% of capacity but the company pointed out there have been no changes to the distillery infrastructure or production methods.

As a result of the increase in production additional warehouses on Islay are being built with the latest completed just last month.

In June this year Bruichladdich UK Distribution was set up in Glasgow to handle distribution of the drinks and Jonathan Owen has since been appointed sales director.

Mr van Bokrijck said the creation of the distribution company allows the business to take more control over the important UK market.

Bruichladdich had been a mothballed distillery until wine merchant Mark Reynier raised £6.5m from a group of investors to fund a purchase of the site in 2000.

Mr Reynier was the only board director to vote against the Remy deal and has now left Bruichladdich on amicable terms.

Five other directors also left when the deal concluded at the end of August last year.

Simon Coughlin, who helped Mr Reynier get the business off the ground, is now chief executive while master distiller Jim McEwan also remains on the board.

Remy saw its sales for the 12 months to March 31 this year grow 16.3% to €1.9 billion (£1.6bn) with operating profit up 18% to €245.4m.