The new Diageo Cambus Cooperage near Alloa (Scotland) has been custom designed in close co-operation with the company’s coopers, drawing on generations of skill, craft and experience and combining it with the state of the art British engineering to dramatically improve the working lives of the coopers, the company said.
HRH toured the new cooperage and met the men whose jobs it is to craft around 250,000 casks each year – all of which will be used to mature Scotch whisky for Diageo’s brands, such as Johnnie Walker, Bell’s and J&B Rare.
HRH, The Earl of Wessex, has a long-standing interest in coopering and is an Honorary Member of the Incorporation of Coopers. He has shown particularly strong support for coopering apprentices and has even lent his name to the Incorporation’s annual Earl of Wessex Awards for Cooperage.
HRH was joined on the tour of Cambus by the Lord Lieutenant of Clackmannanshire, the Rt Hon George Reid, who also has strong links to the industry, with his great-grandfather serving a coopering apprenticeship at Glenochil Distillery in Menstrie where he remained all his working life.
Tom Duncan, a manager at Cambus was one of the team tasked with leading the new cooperage project and he guided HRH and the Lord Lieutenant on the tour. He said: “It is a great honour for everyone at Cambus to have The Earl of Wessex officially open the cooperage, particularly as he has been such a strong supporter of our industry over the years.”
He also explained the ethos behind the cooperage: “It’s not often you get to start with a blank sheet of paper and design something like this from scratch. We worked closely with our coopers to maximise the craft skills which are the core of the job, while using smart technology to minimise the bending and heavy lifting involved. It’s that blend of craft and innovation which makes this different from any cooperage I’ve ever seen.”
To achieve this, the Diageo team turned to Leicester-based engineering firm CI Logistics, which works primarily in the automotive industry, and together they custom-designed a series of mechanical conveyors to move the casks – which weigh up to 85kg when empty – around the cooperage between the hand-craft elements of the process. The result is the world’s most innovative cooperage.
Source: Diageo
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