St Andrews Brewing Company has signed a new deal with supermarket Sainsbury’s to carry the Fife firm’s beers throughout their Scottish stores.
The new contract to supply four beers from their range will be worth around £600,000 a year.
The beer firm, which previously supplied Sainsbury’s with two beers, is also in talks with the supermarket about carrying their products south of the border.
“We are hoping Sainsbury’s will soon take our beers into their England stores as well – we just need to go up a couple of percentage points in sales volumes,” explained the firm’s co-owner Tim Butler.
The contract follows an investment of more than £300,000 to vastly increase their brewing capacity.
The new equipment was commissioned at the end of January.
“We have gone up from a 600 litre brew kit to one with a 5,000 litre capacity,” Mr Butler said.
“We now have the ability to do crash cooling which preserves fresh, bright tropical flavours.
“It gives us a layer of control we didn’t have before and so we’ve got new recipes for our entire range. We think they are all better than before.
“The new equipment will also allow us to do a lager for the first time, which will launch next week.”
The additional capacity means St Andrews Brewing Company, which raised more than £600,000 through a crowdfunding campaign last year, is also exploring possibilities to export their beers for the first time.
Mr Butler said previous talks ground to a halt after the firm could not keep up with demand in Scotland.
He said: “I was in discussions with North East America, Canada and a bit of China about 18 months ago but I had to stop these conversations dead in their tracks because we hit capacity on the brewing side. We will now be reigniting those discussions.”
The beer boss said trading at the firm’s new pub in Dundee’s Caird Hall, which opened last month after an investment of more than £1 million, had exceeded expectations.
Mr Butler said more than 50 people would be employed at that venue. The firm also has two pubs in St Andrews and two in Edinburgh.
“We’ve had an exceptional start at the Caird Hall and are desperately trying to staff up to cope with the demand,” he added.
rmclaren@thecourier.co.uk