A SCOTTISH brewer has claimed it is now Tesco’s top selling craft beer as it hailed sales tripling year-on-year to almost £2 million.
The news comes as the Edinburgh-based Vault City brewery launches two new beers made using real fruit nationwide in Tesco, a Blueberry Maple beer and Triple Fruited Mango beer.
Its beer is available in more than 600 stores across the country.
The firm launched two beers on Tesco shelves last year, one made using tropical fruits and the other made using raspberries.
The beers are exclusive to Tesco and sit outside the company’s usual release schedule which involves a “drop” of three beers every third Sunday – with a green Apple Soor beer, which has been made specially for St Patrick’s Day, and a Guava and Passion Fruit beer among its most recent batch.
Co-founder Steven Smith-Hay, a former IT consultant, said: “When we first launched in Tesco we had no idea what to expect. We spent a long time talking with our community about the decision and we continue to support the independents who helped us find our feet in the craft beer scene.
“We’re focused on making great beer, and the Tesco deal has helped us take huge steps as a brewery. It has introduced lots of people to the world of modern sour beer. We’re taking it to a wider audience, and in doing so we can benefit from economies of scale which will allow us to continue to pay good wages and continue to develop a great brewery."
He added: “Our goal with our Tesco SKUs is to make them as accessible as possible – to create something light and refreshing for people who were potentially trying Vault City and sour beer for the first time ever. I hope these beers continue to start a good few people on their craft beer journey, eventually driving people towards bottle shops, bars and local breweries.”
Vault City, founded in January 2018, has seen revenues grow from just bwlow £94,000 in December 2019 to in excess of £1.8m in December last year, with gross profits in excess of £804,000. When costs are taken into account, the company is still recording a net profit in six figures.
Since a well-publicised shift to a four-day working week, revenues for 2022 are up 168% year-on-year, with net profits up 38%.
Chief of North Sea oil services heavyweight to step down as group posts £100m loss
WOOD chief executive Robin Watson has announced plans to stand down after seven years in charge of the Aberdeen-based engineering giant.
Mr Watson said he felt the time was right to step down as chief executive after leading a drive to transform Wood from a business focused on the North Sea oil services industry into a global operation with interests in a wider range of energy and industrial markets.
Scottish transport giant FirstGroup unveils new chief
TRANSPORT giant FirstGroup has unveiled a Scottish telecoms veteran as its new chief executive.
The Aberdeen-based company, which owns First Bus and runs the Avanti West Coast rail franchise with Trenitalia, has appointed Graham Sutherland, a former senior executive of BT, to the role.
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 here