Scotland’s largest independent brewery, BrewDog has announced the early closure of its Equity for Punks crowd funding scheme, with its cofounder James Watt stating: “The mental shackles that have tied down British SMEs to the staid and unimaginative traditional methods of raising funds have been untethered. We have ushered in a brave new world, and you can expect to see more businesses launching similar schemes in 2014.”
Unprecedented demand has led to the brewery reaching its target of £4.25m a month before the deadline. BrewDog set out in June to raise £4m but confidently increased the target by £250,000 in November to keep up with the mounting demand for shares.
Having shunned the banks for growth investment, BrewDog has so far raised over £7m through over 12,000 ‘fanvestors’ buying shares in the business during three rounds of Equity for Punks.
BrewDog launched this latest round of Equity for Punks in June in idiosyncratic style, driving a tank around the Bank of England with an army of craft beer fans in tow. On offer were 42,000 shares in the company at £95 each.
The Scottish brewery smashed all previous crowdfunding records by selling £1m of shares in the first 24 hours of the punk offering, as beer fans scrambled to buy equity in the business. Unlike many crowdfunding programmes that simply look to raise donations in return for fringe benefits or bonds, BrewDog offers genuine equity in its business, alongside a lifetime discount in its bars and its online shop.
The brewer has achieved an average annual growth of 167% over the past five years and the company is already valued at over three times the value it was given during the last Equity for Punks scheme in 2011. The company now employs 200 staff, is on track to turnover £19m in 2013, with the strong growth forecast to continue into 2014.
BrewDog is Britain’s fastest growing food and drinks brand. The company’s award-winning beers are stocked nationally in all major supermarkets and BrewDog already exports to 38 international markets. Its biggest success in the past year has been the growth of its bar division, opening 12 bars since 2010 – largely funded by Equity for Punks investment – including its first international location in Stockholm, Sweden.
Source: BrewDog
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