One of the country’s oldest distillers has warned it could go out of business if the Scottish Government introduces minimum pricing for alcohol.

Whyte & Mackay said yesterday that imposing a minimum price of 50p per unit could mean the closure of its bottling plant in Grangemouth with the loss of 200 jobs and, because production levels would be affected, another 100 would go at their distilleries.

In a submission to Holyrood’s health committee, the distiller warned: “Whyte & Mackay, a company established in 1844, would essentially cease to exist in anything but name only.”

The Government accused the distiller of using “flawed” data to claim that introducing a minimum price would cost hundreds of jobs.

A spokesman said: “The flaw in the Whyte & Mackay paper is that it’s predicated on a price which has never been used by the Government.

“We have never used 50p as a minimum price and there is a dramatic difference between the figure which Whyte & Mackay have used and 40p, which we have used.”

He declined to confirm if 40p was the figure the Government intended to introduce, saying it would be revealed by ministers as the Bill continued its parliamentary process.

John Beard, chief executive of Whyte and Mackay, warned the controversial proposal could “decimate” the market for own-brand whisky, leading it to be removed from the shelves.

As Whyte and Mackay was the “leading player” in this market, he said the proposal would have a “serious impact” on the firm, which employs 480 people.

Mr Beard said if the minimum price was 50p per unit, the price of own-brand whisky would rise from £10.18 to £14 – a price comparable to many leading brands.

He added: “The own label we supply is excellent quality but I would argue that consumers, given the choice of a leading brand at £14 or an own label at £14, would choose the brand.”

A spokesperson for Health Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “The Whyte & Mackay paper is based on an assumption of a UK-wide minimum price of 50p which, by definition, is not something that the Scottish Government can deliver.

“Therefore the interpretation of the paper is, to say the least, highly misleading.”

Two supermarket chains said they had direct experience of shoppers being prepared to travel long distances to take advantage of cheaper prices.

David Paterson, Scottish affairs manager for Asda, the UK’s second largest supermarket chain, said the Government’s proposals did not address the issue of cross-border trade and internet sales.

He said: “We have very specific experience on both these issues. In Northern Ireland, our store in Enniskillen, on the border, is the No 1 performing store in our UK chain and our No 6 performing store in the global Walmart chain and that is primarily driven by differences in price.

“The bulk of the customers in that store drive from Dublin, an hour and 40 minutes away, and a third of the transactions are in Euros.

“The difference in price between beers, wines and spirits in the centre of Dublin and over the border in Northern Ireland is about 25%.”

Nick Grant, head of legal services at Sainsbury’s, said “white van man” cross-border trade had, for a time, made a Northern Ireland store their top performer.

He said: “The evidence from our Newry store, which is in the same strategic position as the Asda store at Enniskillen, is that, for a while, it was our top-performing store across the entire estate merely because of where it was across the border.

“People were coming 100 miles to shop there and you couldn’t park in Newry anywhere; in lay-bys a mile up the road people were parking to get their alcohol.”

However, Mike Lees, the managing director of Tennent Caledonian Breweries, argued minimum pricing had a role to play.

He said: “It is not the panacea, the silver bullet, but we think it is one of a number of measures in terms of education and a range of other things that can be used to tackle this issue.”