THE co-founder of a fledgling Dumfriesshire gin and rum distillery has highlighted ambitions for growth in mainland Europe, including hopes of adding Romania as an export market soon.
Ray Clynick, who founded Dalton-based Oro Gin with father Raymond and mother Jacqueline after completing a degree in chemical biology, also flagged growth plans in Britain in spite of the UK market being “quite swamped”.
He meanwhile flagged the establishment of an office in Alicante in Spain as a move which would help insulate the business from potential Brexit effects, amid continued heightened uncertainty around this issue. He noted that Oro Gin had sent its first consignment to Spain last December, and was now “growing from the south-east in Alicante”.
Mr Clynick added: “We’ve also got meetings in Romania on the horizon and plan to send a consignment out there. It would be a really great start to 2019 to be exporting to two nations within our first 24 months of operation.”
Touching on Brexit, Mr Clynick said: “Due to the complexity and bizarre nature of Brexit, we have considered [what] may happen. However, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what this could be. By virtue of starting the Spanish outpost of the business, we have safeguarded our supply to Spain…
“Our Alicante office also means that, moving forward, we can use the Spanish company to supply the rest of Europe. If the worst-case scenario came about and trade became too problematic, we would use our knowledge to build a distillery in Europe, thus completely safeguarding our sales abroad.”
The distillery, which has been working with taxpayer-backed Business Gateway and Scottish Development International, produces two, small-batch gins, and has a cask of rum nearly into its second year of ageing. Oro is distilled with 15 botanicals, including pink pepper, lemongrass, cassia bark, cinnamon and juniper. The second gin, Oro V, features “fresh lavender, crisp citrus and gentle orris”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel