Kingsland Drinks Group has partnered with distillery company Manchester Still to install a new fermentation and distillation facility adjacent to its site in Irlam, Salford. 

The new facility, which will be operational this month, provides Kingsland Drinks Group and its sister company Ten Locks “with the ability to produce artisan spirits and marks a major step forward in the firm’s momentum towards becoming a full-service drinks company”.  

The production facility is also home to the creation of Manchester Still’s brands, which include spiced, coconut and white rums.  

Kingsland said the facility will allow for the “development of premium, innovative spirits and non-alcoholic beverages that will appeal to mixologists, bartenders and consumers, alike”.

The investment enables both businesses to meet the “growing demand for contract distilling and collaborate with partners across the on and off trade” to create spirits, the company said.

Manchester Still and Kingsland are planning a pipeline of spirits NPD, with the first innovation from Ten Locks expected in summer 2022. 

Exact spend behind the project was not disclosed, though Andy Sagar, chairman of Kingsland Drinks Group told Drinks Retailing the project “is just one part of a multimillion-pound investment in recent years in infrastructure and capabilities”.

 “The facility follows the installation of a new canning, bag in box and carbonation manufacturing lines plus the creation of an onsite winery,” he added. “Alongside this, we’ve introduced a high-speed bottling line, expanded our NPD capabilities with a new laboratory focused on future-thinking and insights-driven product development, and upgraded our abilities to bottle spirits and package new and emerging formats.”