Member Article

£3million Investment At Greencroft Bottling

A £3million investment in filling lines and labellers at Greencroft Bottling in County Durham has increased capacity by 25% meaning the company can now fill up to 90,000 bottles and boxes of wine per hour.

This multi-million pound investment means Greencroft, which is predominantly powered by renewable energy, is now not only the most modern wine and spirit bottling facility in Europe, but also one of the largest and certainly the most environmentally friendly in the UK.

The two new lines at Greencroft means the company now has a total of seven production lines - five large lines and both bag-in-box and TetraPak facilities alongside new state-of-the-art packing and labelling machines which are BRC Packaging and Packaging Materials Standard Grade A rated. These seven high-tech lines enable the company to pack a range of products in a variety of packaging including 187ml and 75cl single serve, 250ml, 500ml, 70cl, 75cl and litres in glass and PET.

All lines include full gas management to eliminate oxygen within the wine at bottling, and adhered to strict UK quality systems.

Shortlisted in the 2016 Guardian Sustainable Business Awards’ Carbon and Energy Management category, the Lanchester group of companies, which includes Greencroft Bottling and its sister company Lanchester Wines, is the world’s only certified Carbon Minus wine company meaning the business generates more clean energy than it uses. This means that wine producers using Greencroft’s facilities can reduce the overall carbon footprint of their product, a quality increasingly important to both our retailer partners and millennial consumers.

Mark Satchwell, managing director of Greencroft Bottling, said: “We understand business doesn’t stand still and so we’re constantly seeking new ways to further improve the excellent service we provide to our customers. As a contract bottler we always try to have significant headroom to meet the needs of our customers whenever they need us and are already working on plans to grow our facilities even further.

“Our ongoing investments in both leading edge bottling technology and our renewable energy creation mean that not only are we able to offer world class facilities right here in the UK, but also carbon savings on the final product, a fact we know is increasingly important to consumers.

As a group of companies, we’ve also invested in additional bonded warehouse space which will give our sister company Lanchester Wines a total of 920,000 sq. ft. of Class A bonded storage while we have plans to build a new 250,000 sq. ft. bottling facility to extend Greencroft’s capabilities.“

Greencroft Bottling Ltd is part of the Lanchester group of companies with each business within the portfolio complimenting the others to provide a vineyard to table wine service. The group comprises five businesses: Greencroft, Lanchester Wines incorporating The Pip Stop, Lanchester Gifts, Lanchester Energy and Lanchester Properties.

Lanchester Energy, nominated as the flagship company for the Government’s Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme (ESOS)*, provides renewable energy to power Lanchester’s properties while Lanchester Gifts provides an additional route to market for Lanchester’s wine products

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Greencroft Bottling .