Drinks

Irish Drinks Company Skellig Six18 Expecting To Invest Approximately €4m In Its Business This Year

By Dave Simpson
Irish Drinks Company Skellig Six18 Expecting To Invest Approximately €4m In Its Business This Year

Irish drinks company Skellig Six18 is expecting to invest approximately €4 million in its business this year.

As reported by The Irish Times, the company is currently developing a €10 million distillery and visitor centre in the Ring of Kerry area, and its backers, which include head of Davy's private client division Patrick Cooney, have invested €2 million of their own money in the initiative and raised approximately €1.75 million under the Employment & Investment Incentive Scheme. Skellig Six18 is currently raising additional funds under the same scheme.

The Irish Times quotes Skellig Six18 founder and director June O'Connell as saying, "We became one of Enterprise Ireland's high-potential start-ups last year and are expecting to start exporting in the third quarter, so despite setbacks [due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic] we are still very much building the business.

"We have been lucky in some ways because we didn't have a huge stockpile, as we've not been in business too long, and while we haven't ended up in as many of the markets we hoped to be in by this stage, we've done very well selling online."

"A Big Appetite" For What The Company Is Doing

Skellig Six18, the distillery of which is located in a former sock manufacturing plant in Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry, opened a temporary visitor centre for a short period of time in 2020, and the company is hoping to attract more visitors this year.

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O'Connell stated, "We had in about 1,000 people in six weeks even though we were only allowed to take six people at a time, so it shows a big appetite for what we're doing."

The final phase of Skellig Six18's distillery and visitor centre will include a VIP lounge overlooking the Fertha river estuary.

The company, the name of which comes from the number of steps that lead to the top of Skellig Michael, focusses on the production of whiskey and artisan gin.

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