Receivers have been appointed over Waterford Whisky, the distillery business founded by industry veteran Mark Reynier, after it failed to raise fresh funds.
The receivership is the culmination of several weeks of efforts by the company and its main lender, HSBC bank, to put in place a turnaround plan for the business.
The receivership is a consensual appointment. Workers at the distillery were informed on Wednesday morning that Mark Degnan and Daryll McKenna of Interpath Advisory had been appointed as receivers.
The Irish Times understands that Interpath had been working with the company and the lenders in order to either raise fresh equity or put in place some other solution, but that this process was not successful. After an emergency board meeting earlier this week, the company invited HSBC to appoint receivers over the company and take control of the business.
It is likely that, over the coming weeks, the receivers will either attempt to find a buyer for the business, or sell assets, such as its stocks of whiskey or the distillery itself.
“It’s tragic news,” Mr Reynier said on Wednesday. “Anything I’m going to say isn’t going to be adequate to describe my feelings right now. It’s been a great effort from the whole Waterford team. They’ve given great dedication, done a great job. I’m sorry I’ve let them down.”
Mr Reynier is a former wine seller who, in 2000, bought and revised the Scotch whisky brand Bruichladdich, based in the isle of Islay, by putting together a consortium of investors to invest in the mothballed distillery.
He grew the sales of the brand from zero to around €15 million, before it was bought out by drinks giant Remy Cointreau in 2012 for £58 million (€68 million).
In 2015, he bought Diageo’s former brewery in Co Waterford with the aim of creating a new Irish whiskey based on the concept of terroir – a wine industry term that relates to the different kinds of soil in which grapes are grown and how it influences the final flavour of the wine.
In interviews at the time, he described his plans to distil individual bottling of whiskey from the grains of different farms, which he would then blend into a “whiskey cuvée”, akin to a Château Latour in wine. He described how he intended to make it “the biggest mindf**k of a whiskey ever created”.
The most recent accounts for Waterford Whisky, filed with its parent company in the UK, show that it had sales of €3 million in 2022, down from €3.3 million the year before. The accounts at the time blamed the €300,000 drop in revenue on its choice of distribution partner in the US. The accounts also showed the company had accumulated losses of €7.7 million, and €40.1 million worth of whiskey stocks.
Those accounts said that, in January 2023, the company “secured long-term funding for its working capital requirements” through a €45 million facility agreement from HSBC Invoice Finance UK Limited, replacing its existing debt. Accounts for 2023 have yet to be filed.
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