ARRAN Brewery has put its hotel and visitor centre on the market due to financial problems caused by a fire.
The Loch Earn Brewery and hotel in Perthshire is on the market for £775,000 but the company says a buyer would need £1.5m to bring the property 'up to spec'.
It features ten moorings, three piers, fishing, a brewery with the potential to brew 3500 litres per day, a cider producing shack as well as a hotel with three bars, three restaurants, a coffee shop and 39 bedrooms.
The firm which produces a million bottles of beer a year had only a year-and-a-half ago selected the centre in the village of St Fillans on the bank of Loch Earn as the location for a new cider brewery.
Gerald Michaluk, managing director of the brewery company, whose brands include Arran Blonde, said there had been problems with an insurance claim following a fire.
He said: “It is with a heavy heart we are having to put the property on the market.
"We have not recovered from a small fire, following which the insurance company has still not settled our claim in full.
"This has led to a lack of funds while the property needs around £600,000 spent on it to bring it up to spec.
"Unfortunately we simply don’t have that kind of money, given the current downturn in the brewing industry, to put into the building.
"As such we have put the site on the market for offers over £775,000 but a new owner would need to have around £1,500,000 to acquire the site and to realise its full potential”.
The main building is a large C-listed Victorian property that comprises 38 bedrooms, along with three separate bar and restaurant areas, including a loch-side beer garden.
The brewery acquired the site in 2013 and purchased and installed a secondary brewery in the outbuildings which is currently in need of commissioning.
Plans are to build a further three buildings and open both a whisky shop and a local produce shop.
The brewery reports having tried to form a joint venture with several parties on the site but in the end none of those proposals have come to fruition.
The brewery recently acquired Flying Firkin, a wholesale beer distributor in the North of England, and is in the process of acquiring a 16500 sq ft warehouse facility for this company.
The brewery has said it is broadening its focus to include the south.
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