Tony Cleary, Founder, Lanchester Wine Cellars

Nov 16 2009 By Andrew Hebden, The Journal

Building one of the country's leading wine merchants and bottling plants has been a lifetime obsession for Tony Cleary. But the boss of Lanchester Wine Cellars has always done it with a smile on his face, as Andrew Hebden discovers.

TONY Cleary may well be the first person you would turn to for a fine bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or a full-bodied Merlot. But how about 20,000 pairs of John Lennon-style sunglasses, several hundred new suitcases, or 2,000 cross-eyed teddy bears?

His 260,000sq ft of premises at the Greencroft Estate, near Stanley in County Durham, is home to some unlikely things that he has amassed over the years, mainly to give away as part of wine and spirits promotions. But it is not piles of unwanted suitcases that are giving him headaches at the moment.

As Cleary proudly shows me around the vast Greencroft Bottling plant, he is frustrated by the fact that both of his ultra-modern bottling lines are out of action just as we are taking a tour. A technical hitch has temporarily halted the lines that have been working flat out, bottling wines from all over the world 24 hours a day, six days a week.

Cleary is frustrated that I am missing out on seeing the firm’s facilities in full swing – even though it remains an impressive sight.

They are among the most modern bottling facilities in the world – filling as many as 12,000 bottles an hour using technology which means the wine leaves the site in better condition than when it arrived – and customers have been so impressed that Greencroft is struggling to keep up with demand at the moment.

Having turned over £2.7m last year, Greencroft will do more than £6m in 2009 and is expected to grow to £11m in 2010. And there are exciting further expansion plans in the pipeline.

Further proof of Greencroft’s success lies in an adjoining warehouse which is stacked with thousands of pallets of wine waiting to be shipped to retailers all over the UK.

With Christmas approaching, the Lanchester Wine Cellars group of companies, headed by Cleary, is at its busiest. Not that you will find the managing director complaining.

"If you had told me a year ago that we would have this much stock in here in 12 months’ time, I would have never believed it," he says as we tour the site.

In the grip of recession, Lanchester is clearly bucking the trend in the wine and spirits industry, which is partly due to the diversification path the business has taken over the years.

"The pub companies are struggling and even the good restaurants are down," he says.

"A lot of people think ‘let’s run a pub’ but they don’t know what they are letting themselves in for."