Web dating and IT entrepreneur Bill Dobbie is aiming to emulate the early pioneers of the Scotch whisky industry by giving the Hebridean Island of Raasay its first legal distillery, following a multimillion pound investment.
The new "craft distillery", currently in the planning process and due to start construction this year, will form the first part of a new venture R&B [Raasay & Borders] Distillers, which will pair the island facility with a partner distillery at a so-far undecided site in the southern Scotland, where Dobbie's business partner Alasdair Day has a long family heritage in the whisky business.
Dobbie, who co-founded the AIM-listed web dating company Cupid (now Castle Street Investments) and who chairs the crowd-funding platform LendingCrowd told the Sunday Herald:
"I had been approached quite a few times to invest in various whisky ventures and when I started looking at the business behind these proposals it seemed like an attractive option. I'm very much hoping that the trend towards craft brewing would be replicated in a trend towards craft distilling"
"The economics of the whisky industry are pretty good, and while there are big players around, there is a place for niche distilling businesses. I was keen to commit some investment there and pursue it over 10-15 years, which is the right sort of timescale for this venture to mature and blossom.
"There was also the romantic idea of comparing myself to 19th Century whisky people in Scotland who were all guys with some money and some imitative and I thought let's have a bash at it, it was something I could think about doing as I get less and less involved in day to day technology. "
As well as the land for the distillery, located on a prominent site close to the island's ferry, Dobbie has also bought the island's 30-room hotel, which he intends to demolish and replace with a visitor centre, adjacent to a traditional private house which will be restored and turned into a five-ensuite bedroom hotel. Over the next five years R&B intend to employ 12 people, or 10 per cent of the island's population. Dobbie is also seeking a commercial joint venture with ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne to offer distillery visit packages, that he believes will boost the attractiveness of the island, which lies on the North side of Skye. "There are no pubs or shops and this might be a catalyst for other small developments on Raasay, who knows?" he said.
This weekend Dobbie and Day are launching the company's website www.rbdistillers.com. The company intends to develop their sales channels in anticipation of the first batches of Raasay and Borders whisky by selling stop-gap products, Raasay While We Wait and Tweedale blends.
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