SCOTTISH craft brewer Innis and Gunn has announced Heriot-Watt University’s Research Park to the west of Edinburgh – home to the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling – as the location for its new brewery.
Subject to planning permission and further corporate and regulatory approvals, it will be the first major brewery to be built in Edinburgh for 150 years.
Built to accommodate the demand for Innis and Gunn’s beers, it is anticipated that up to 30 new jobs will be created, with Innis and Gunn’s existing 45 office-based team relocating from offices in Edinburgh’s Randolph Crescent.
READ MORE: Innis & Gunn hit crowdfunding target for new Edinburgh brewery
The tie-up is the UK’s first major collaboration of this type between a full-scale brewery and a university and will create a centre for brewing studies and applied learning on the world stage.
Heriot-Watt University’s International Centre for Brewing and Distilling students will benefit from the brewery through opportunities gaining hands-on experience across all aspects of brewing operations in a large-scale production brewery. Innis and Gunn and Heriot Watt University will announce details of the academic collaborations between them including Innis and Gunn’s commitment to learning in due course.
The collaboration will be on a par with other famed brewery universities like Weihenstephan in Germany, and Heriot-Watt and Innis and Gunn anticipate a broad range of benefits to arise as a result.
The brewery will also be part financed via a £15 million loan which is currently being progressed, subject to due diligence.
Innis and Gunn’s founder and master brewer, Dougal Gunn Sharp, said: “Building this brewery is a big step for Innis and Gunn in delivering our ambitious growth plan, from which we can capitalise on the existing strong performance of our craft lager and portfolio of IPAs and barrel-aged beers.”
“We are creating a centre for brewing, collaboration and applied learning on the world stage. Innis and Gunn and Heriot-Watt University are both highly respected international brands renowned for their quality and forward thinking. This collaboration brings these two brands together in the most exciting way we can imagine.”
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