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Kilbeggan-Based Whiskey Company Sold For €73 Million

Thursday, 22 December 2011

THE company which owns the whiskey distillery in Kilbeggan has been sold for €73 million.
Cooley Distillery, which has operations at the famous Locke's site in Kilbeggan and at Cooley in Co Louth, is being sold to Beam, the United States-based alcohol giant best known for its Jim Beam bourbon.
The sale represents a massive pay day after 24 years for the founders and shareholders of Cooley, chiefly its chairman, John Teeling, a teetotaler and serial entrepreneur from Clontarf.
A regular visitor to Kilbeggan, he founded the company in the mid-1980s with the help of the business expansion scheme, using an old alcohol factory in Cooley to distil the whiskey and bonded warehouses at the former Locke's Distillery on the bank of the Brosna in Kilbeggan.
As stocks grew, Cooley began maturing whiskey in a warehouse Cormac Street in Tullamore, and casks are ageing there to this day.
Cooley currently has over seven million litres of whiskey maturing in 60,000 oak casks in Kilbeggan, Tullamore and Cooley.
There is over 50,000 square feet of storage space in Tullamore, 40,000 in Kilbeggan, and 70,000 at the expanding Cooley warehouse.
The whiskey is distilled in Kilbeggan and Cooley. The company says the Kilbeggan operation is 'unique' in that it uses a 180-year-old pot still, a wooden mash tun and wooden fermenters, all based in the world's oldest licensed distillery.
Kilbeggan can produce 25,000 cases a year while Cooley has a capacity of up to one million cases a year.
The Cooley brands are Kilbeggan, Connemara, Tyrconnell and Greenore.
'Cooley is one of only three sources for Irish whiskey, and the only independent player, so this transaction is a unique and compelling high-return opportunity to enter one of the industry's highest growth categories,' said Matt Shattock, president and chief executive officer of Beam.
'We see the opportunity to leverage our combination of scale with agility to further build consumer demand for Cooley's award-winning brands, and to expand distribution off a relatively small base in key export markets for Irish whiskey across North America and Europe,' Mr Shattock added.
'Cooley's brands and distilleries have a heritage that's unmatched in the world of Irish whiskey, so they will be a great fit with our portfolio of brands with long and rich histories. We look forward to being good stewards of these iconic Irish assets. We are also eager to work with the Cooley team, led by the Teeling family,
who have built Cooley with so much pride and passion, to capitalize on the opportunities that lie ahead.'
Explaining the background to the decision to sell the company, the only remaining independent Irish whiskey producer, Mr Teeling said, 'Beam understands whiskey. They have the culture, experience and global strength to enable the Cooley portfolio of brands to reach their potential in the fast growing Irish whiskey category.'
'The renaissance in Irish whiskey, most evident in the United States, is now spreading across the world. Through Beam, our brands, built on quality, will be introduced to a host of new consumers. I am certain that the marriage between Cooley and Beam will benefit all.'
The marriage is certainly benefitting the founder and his family. The sale of shares will earn Mr Teeling about €13 million and his son, Jack, who is the managing director and will continue in that role for a time, €3 million.
Lee Mallaghan, an owner of Carton House, will earn about €6.2 million from his shareholding.
The distillery manager in Kilbeggan is local man Brian Quinn. Speaking in September when Cooley Distillery hosted its first open day in Kilbeggan Mr Quinn said he was delighted with the success of the distillery's visitor centre, which had been conceived back in 1982, and was run by a local committee before being taken over by Cooley last January.
It welcomed its one millionth visitor this summer and Mr Quinn admitted that back in the early 1980s he never anticipated that so many tourists would pass through.
'No I did not. And I don't think anybody else did either,' he declared.
'A lot of people said we were mad and fools and all the rest but we kept at it and it worked out well.'
Mr Quinn said the involvement of Cooley was a key development. 'Of course it wouldn't have been as good if Cooley Distillery hadn't been formed and taken an interest in it because it brought back the whiskey aspect and that has been a tremendous help in repairing roofs and chimneys and spending money,' he said.
'I don't think it would have got so far as a museum if Cooley hadn't started distilling and as well as being a museum it's a working distillery.'
Cooley is currently carrying out a 'strategic review' to see what is needed for the whole Kilbeggan Distillery site.
The sale of Cooley comes shortly after the acquisition of the famous Tullamore Dew whiskey brand by Scotch company William Grant & Sons.
They recently lodged a planning application for a major renovation of the Tullamore Dew heritage centre on the bank of the Grand Canal at Bury Quay in Tullamore.
According to industry figures, Jameson, which is owned by Pernod Ricard, is the biggest selling Irish whiskey, with 3.4 million cases being purchased each year.
Tullamore Dew is next, with 650,000 cases, followed by Bushmills, a Diageo company, on 600,000 cases, and Cooley, with 425,000.
Irish whiskey consumption is growing all over the world at present and sales of Cooley were 13 percent up in 2010, compared to 10 percent for the entire Irish whiskey sector.

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