One of the UK’s leading wine bottlers and distributors, the Lanchester group of companies, has recorded an annual turnover of £77m, an increase of 20% from 2014’s £64m turnover with a net profit of just over £5m, placing the business on track to reach its target of near £100m turnover in 2016.
Five businesses make up the Lanchester group of companies spanning different areas of expertise within the UK wine sector and its supporting industries – Lanchester Wines, Greencroft Bottling Limited, Lanchester Gifts, Lanchester Energy and Lanchester Properties. Lanchester Wines incorporates Lanchester Wine Cellars, the group’s wine importers, shippers and bonded warehouse keepers division and Lanchester Wine Sales, the group’s wholesale of wine, beer, spirits and other alcoholic drinks to major customers.
The latest accounts for the year ended June 30 show Greencroft Bottling alone grow turnover by 25% to over £40m while over the last three years, £8m has been re-invested back into the company’s renewable energy initiatives through Lanchester Energy.
Each business within the Lanchester portfolio compliments the other businesses to provide a vineyard to table, wine service. 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.
Tony Cleary, managing director of the Lanchester group of companies, said: “We understand business doesn’t stand still and so we’ve invested heavily in leading edge technology over the last 12 months to ensure we are the most modern business of our kind in Europe while maintaining our exceptional high quality of service.
“Two new bottling lines at our County Durham site mean we now have 8 production lines consisting of five large and one medium bottle lines enabling us to fill a range of size bottles including PET, and both TetraPak and bag-in-box lines. These lines, along with new state-of-the-art packing and labelling machines, mean we can produce upwards of 90,000 bottles of wine and spirits per hour while maintaining our 100% quality finished product record.
“We’ve also invested in additional bonded warehouse space which will give Lanchester a total of 920,000 sq. ft. of Class A bonded space and bonded storage while we have plans to build a new 250,000 sq. ft. bottling facility.”
Lanchester Wine Cellars was established in 1980 and since then, the Lanchester group of companies has expanded. It has invested £8m into sustainable initiatives, the most significant being three 50 metre tall wind turbines at Lanchester’s County Durham headquarters which, combined, generate close to 6 million kW hours of renewable energy per year for the business. This is more energy than the business consumes which, combined with further investment in solar panels and electric fleet vehicles makes it Carbon Minus and the greenest liquor company in the world.
Tony added: “Lanchester is a legacy business, deeply embedded with sustainable activities and investment therein. We invest heavily in our business growing it to the next stage and investing in smart, passionate people who love what they do.”
The company, which employs 385 people in North East England, has a record low of permanent staff turnover and a high number of long standing employees thanks to its profit sharing incentives. Tony added: “The success of each of the Lanchester businesses is down to the individuals within it who strive for perfection each day. We have an outstanding team and I look forward to celebrating our success with them all.”
For more information on the Lanchester group of companies, please visit www.LanchesterGroup.com