Douglas Sharp, the creator of Innis & Gunn, has announced plans to turn the beer into a global brand after acquiring William Grant’s 90% stake in the brewer.
Sharp, who is a former head brewer at Caledonian Brewery, said he would open a new Edinburgh office to oversee plans to aggressively expand the brand internationally.
He told The Scotsman: “To be honest the market couldn’t be more buoyant. It is the number one Scottish beer in both Sweden and Canada. In the UK it is the number four speciality beer and our growth last year was 60%. It really is growing fairly rapidly.
“We have already signed up the people that will staff the Edinburgh office and we now want to concentrate on growing the beer in overseas markets where we do not have a presence. The big opportunity for us is that this type of speciality beer, with this type of Scottish provenance, is of considerable interest and the research we have done shows that there is a big future for this brand. So the future is very exciting.”
