Scottish brewery takes just three days to raise £1m in crowdfund drive

Edinburgh-based brewery Innis & Gunn has smashed its £1 million crowd-funding target in just three days.

The businesses, which was founded in 2003 and has seen year-on-year volume and sales growth, with turnover hitting £12.5 million in 2015, up 36 per cent since 2012, is now looking to open new bars across the UK and US.

The firm launched its fresh bid for funds having been looking to accelerate its growth plans with the opening of four new Beer Kitchen bars next year, but the speed with which it reached its target, and the likelihood that it will be overfunded, means the brewery may be able to ramp up its plans even further.

The AdventureCapital campaign hosted by Crowdcube, which currently stands at £1.325 million, is offering around 2 per cent equity in the business and still has three weeks to run.

It was launched on 1 November week with Innis & Gunn employees offered first refusal on shares in the business.

Innis &Gunn is looking to double this to £25 million over the next three years, by increasing production and adding a new barrel ageing hall and filtration technology to the Inveralmond brewery that it bought in April.

Currently it sells around 23 million bottles of beer globally and operates two Beer Kitchens in Dundee and Edinburgh, with a third set to open in St Andrews this month.

Innis & Gunn founder Dougal Gunn Sharp said: “We never expected that within 72 hours of our crowdfunding opening that we would have sailed past our £1million target and we are delighted to have welcomed almost 800 new shareholders into our Innis & Gunn community.

“For a company that had just three shareholders a week ago this is a great step forward. It is clear there are still people who want to join us, but they have not done so yet because they did not envisage that things would move so fast any more than we did.

“So we have decided to keep the investment platform open for a while to give those people a little longer to invest.”