Looks like a good year at Lanchester Wine Cellars

Mar 1 2010 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A £1M investment in a new bottling line is set to make a County Durham wine filling company one of the biggest in Europe.

Lanchester Wine Cellars aims to have its new machine in operation this month, creating extra jobs and putting the 30-year-old company on course to fill 43,000 bottles of wine an hour.

The group, which includes the Greencroft Bottling Company and Lanchester Property as well as Lanchester Wine Cellars, is now on course to boost its turnover from 2009’s £18m to £23m this year.

Currently, 155 employees and around 30 agency staff work at Lanchester Wine Cellars and additional people will be needed to run the new line.

Managing director Tony Cleary says he was left with no choice but to expand from the factory’s current two bottling machines because the level of demand from customers.

He said: “We couldn’t cope with the business that was coming at us and we needed more lines. People are realising wine is better bottled in the country of consumption rather than the country of origin. It saves money and saves on the carbon footprint.

“One 20ft, 26,000-litre bulk tanker is equal to two 40ft containers of glass bottled wine. The carbon footprint drops dramatically. It’s cheaper, it’s greener.”

“It’s about jobs,” said Mr Cleary. “We’ve created almost 30 new jobs already but we are looking to create more. When the new machine comes in, we’ll crash through the 30 barrier - probably another 10. We’ve just been interviewing two or three people.”