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£10million
Cambus Cooperage brings ancient craft
into 21st Century.
His Royal Highness, The Earl of Wessex,
officially opened the first new
cooperage to be built in Scotland for
decades, which uniquely blends craft and
innovation to transform the
centuries-old trade.
The new Diageo Cambus Cooperage near
Alloa has been custom designed in close
co-operation with the company’s coopers,
drawing on generations of skill, craft
and experience and combining it with the
state-of-the-art British engineering -
never before used in a cooperage - to
dramatically improve the working lives
of the coopers.
HRH toured the new cooperage and met the
men whose jobs it is to craft around
250,000 casks each year - all of which
will be used to mature Scotch whisky for
Diageo’s world leading brands, such as
Johnnie Walker, Bell’s and J&B Rare.
As well as meeting a range of
time-served coopers, including some with
decades of experience in the trade, HRH
met with a Diageo’s apprentice coopers
who are now able to hone their skills in
a custom-built coopering school within
the new cooperage.
HRH, The Earl of Wessex, has a
long-standing interest in coopering and
is an Honorary Member of the
Incorporation of Coopers. He has shown
particularly strong support for
coopering apprentices and has even lent
his name to the Incorporation’s annual
Earl of Wessex Awards for Cooperage.
HRH was joined on the tour of Cambus by
the Lord Lieutenant of Clackmannanshire,
the Rt Hon George Reid, who also has
strong links to the industry, with his
great-grandfather serving a coopering
apprenticeship at Glenochil Distillery
in Menstrie where he remained all his
working life.
Tom Duncan, a manager at Cambus was one
of the team tasked with leading the new
cooperage project and he guided HRH and
the Lord Lieutenant on the tour.
He said: "It is a great honour for
everyone at Cambus to have The Earl of
Wessex officially open the cooperage,
particularly as he has been such a
strong supporter of our industry over
the years."
He also explained the ethos behind the
cooperage: "It’s not often you get to
start with a blank sheet of paper and
design something like this from scratch.
We worked closely with our coopers to
maximise the craft skills which are the
core of the job, while using smart
technology to minimise the bending and
heavy-lifting involved. It’s that blend
of craft and innovation which makes this
different from any cooperage I’ve ever
seen."
To achieve this, the Diageo team turned
to Leicester-based engineering firm CI
Logistics, which works primarily in the
automotive industry, and together they
custom-designed a series of mechanical
conveyors to move the casks – which
weigh up to 85kg when empty - around the
cooperage between the hand-craft
elements of the process. The result is
the world’s most innovative cooperage.
Calum Bruce, 51, one of Diageo’s longest
serving coopers with 35-years service,
having started in the trade at age 16,
explained the difference the new ways of
working had made to the coopers.
He said: "A lot has changed over the
last 35 years, but the basic skills have
stayed the same. But Cambus is something
different altogether. We still use the
same skills to do the same job, but the
difference is the machines now do a lot
of the heavy lifting so we don’t have to
spend time and effort on hard labour and
we can focus on the skilled part of the
job. That is what has really transformed
the way we work."
Brian Law, one of eight apprentices
currently learning their trade on
Diageo’s four-year apprentice scheme,
also welcomed the investment the company
has made in the future of the trade. He
said: "It is a really exciting time to
be learning my trade as a cooper. At
Cambus, Diageo has an investment in the
future of coopering and that’s also an
investment in the futures of all the
guys who work here."
Richard Bedford, Diageo’s grain
distilling director, who was responsible
for the Cambus Cooperage project, said
the increase in demand for Diageo’s
world-leading Scotch whisky brands meant
the new cooperage was a key part of the
company’s overall investment programme
for growing its production capacity in
Scotland.
He said: "The demand for Scotch whisky
is growing around the world,
particularly in the emerging markets of
Asia and Latin America. To meet that
increasing demand Diageo is investing in
growing Scotch whisky production
capacity across Scotland. That means we
need more casks than ever before, so the
new Cambus Cooperage is a key part of
the future success of our Scotch whisky
brands."
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