The Glenmorangie Company has installed a new solar array at its bottling plant in Livingston as part of a wider investment programme to double capacity at the facility.

The 1,476 panels covering the majority of the building’s roof are part of an eight-figure investment across operations at the Scotch whisky group, which owns and makes the Glenmorangie and Ardbeg single malts. Following a record year of sales, the company is expanding capacity at the plant to meet increasing demand.

The solar array will allow Glenmorangie to cut costs and carbon output as it seeks to achieve net zero by 2040. Work at the Alba Campus bottling plant, which includes the installation of a new fast line and two additional buildings, started in November 2021 and is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

The company, which is owned by Paris-based luxury goods empire LVMH, opened the purpose-built plant in Livingston in 2011. It currently employs about 150 people.

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"We’re putting sustainability at the heart of the expansion of our Alba bottling plant," facilities director Michael Scotland said.

"Our capacity will be increasing with new high-speed lines being installed over the coming year. At the same time, we have installed solar panels to reduce our current reliance on the national grid."

In January, Glenmorangie announced its “best-ever” sales performance as its recovery from the pandemic gained pace. Expansion in the online and direct-to-consumer markets helped to overcome the downturn in hospitality and travel retail during the previous 22 months of Covid lockdowns.

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The distiller added that it expected to beat 2021’s record performance during the current year, paving the way for investment plans of “tens of millions of pounds” annually. This includes the construction of new warehousing near its Glenmorangie distillery in Tain, new still houses at Ardbeg on Islay, and other low-carbon upgrades.

“We have key projects already in motion or completed at our sites including the solar array at Livingston, [and] the installation of an anaerobic digestion plant in Tain as part of our Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project (DEEP)," operations director Peter Nelson said.

“We also continue to work in partnership with other distilleries on new hydrogen energy trials with many more projects in the pipeline to achieve our 2040 net zero ambition.”