Scotland’s largest independent wines and spirits merchant, Inverarity Morton (IM), is to close its regional depot in Milnathort.
All 29 employees are being offered posts at the new headquarters in Glasgow.
IM’s managing director, Stephen Russell, cited tough trading conditions combined with spiralling maintenance costs at the Kinross-shire site as key factors in the decision.
He stated: “The last twelve months haven’t been easy for the licensed trade.
“A lot of businesses are counting the cost of the aftermath of the new drink-drive legislation in Scotland and continued slow economic recovery. Poor trading has had a knock-on effect on our business.”
A full business audit was conducted to identify ways to cut costs without compromising service.
“Moving our entire business under one roof made complete commercial sense and will allow us to operate far more effectively and efficiently,” he said.
The company moved its headquarters to larger premises in Glasgow last September, investing £3m in the refurbishment of the 100,000 square feet site for IM’s 140 staff.
The Milnathort depot came with IM’s acquisition of Forth Wines in 2013 and the company said over £500,000 is now needed to upgrade the site.
Forth Wines had otherwise planned to vacate the site and sell it for residential redevelopment. Mr Russell said the steep renovation costs further influenced the decision to close.
“We looked at all the avenues open to us and the most feasible solution was to close Milnathort,” he continued.
“At the time of the acquisition, having a second depot was invaluable, because we were bursting at the seams in our old HQ.
“Now that we have moved, we are more than able to absorb the entire Milnathort operation within our existing infrastructure so our customers will see little or no difference to the way their accounts are managed.”
IM will begin a consultation process with affected staff, hoping to minimise redundancies among the Milnathort workforce.
The company said there will be no net job losses across the business. The management team is looking at measures, including relocation packages, for the 29 Milnathort employees in telesales, admin, warehousing and marketing.
The closure will be phased between March and May, and the 75,000sq ft Milnathort site will eventually be put up for sale.
As a composite drinks distributor to the licensed trade, Inverarity Morton employs over 200 people and supplies over 3,000 on-trade outlets in Scotland.
The firm is a recognised centre of excellence for wine and spirits training and picked up Best Wine and Spirits Wholesaler of the Year at the Scottish Bar & Pub Awards 2015.