admin – Faer Isles Distillery

Scottish Copper Craftmanship

To deliver our whisky stills and primary equipment, we have selected Scottish supplier LH Stainless/Speyside Copper Works. LH Stainless was chosen after a thorough process of supplier research and estimation of quotes and proposals assisted by Allen Associates.

LHS is a reputable distillery manufacturer with a long tradition of strong craftsmanship and engineering. Relying on time-honoured traditions such as hammered copper stills allied with the latest in 3D design technology, LHS was just the right match to the focus on quality we have in Faer Isles Distillery.

Based less than 5 miles from Dufftown in Speyside, it is situated in the heart of the major whisky distilling area in the Scottish highland.

LHS provides process engineering, vessel manufacturing, and design services for the distilling and brewing industries. They offer everything from initial concept design, manufacturing, commissioning, and production, including turnkey distillation projects.

LH Stainless is a key supplier in the whisky industry and has carried out substantial projects for all of the major distilling companies in Scotland including Diageo, Chivas Brothers, Dewars, William Grant & Son and Beam Global. LHS have also been the selected provider for several ambitious craft distilling startups in recent years such as ArdnahoeHolyroodIsle of Raasay, and Nc’nean as well as supplying mashing and distillation equipment for new distilleries as far afield as China, Australia, New Zealand and Finland.

 

Our German Gin Gem

 

When we selected a gin still from Müller Brennereianlagen, we were buying into a long tradition of German engineering, quality, and craftmanship.

Established in 1929, this is a 4th generation family business with a long tradition of hand-made and hand-hammered copper stills. But in addition to following time-honored traditions, they are also an innovative company with a patented column technology that is quite unique, offering a very efficient and flavor enhancing distillation method. Müller has delivered stills to 51 countries on 6 continents, so although small and focused on hand-made craftmanship, they are truly and international provider.

It is no coincidence that Müller is established in Oberkirch, just a few kilometers from the French border and Strasbourg. The small village of only 800 inhabitants is at the center of a small area with approximately 100 distilleries! The county (Ortenaukreis) has 6,000, and the region (Baden) has 15,000. So, this is indeed the very heart of German distilling country, a density that neither Scotland nor Kentucky can compete with.

According to one of the 4. Generation Müller brothers now running the company, Sebastian: “It all started in 1726, when empress Maria Theresa of Austria allowed the farmers in her empire to distil leftover fruits and turn them into spirits. The limit was max. 300 L pure alcohol per year, and this law still exists. It is the so called “Abfindungsbrennerei”.”

Our gin still will be 400 L still and will be delivered in May, so installation and test production are scheduled for June, and we plan to have our first gin product on the Faroese market late summer.

 

Digital Shares and Crypto Funding

When it was announced that we would be allowing people to use crypto currency to buy shares in Faer Isles Distillery, we received a lot of questions. Crypto currencies still seem to have a bad reputation due to the initial problems associated with it. Therefore, we will try to explain.

First of all: using crypto currency will not be the only way you can participate in the crowdfunding later this year to buy shares in the company. You can use US dollars, Euros and Danish krone as well. Using crypto currency is only an option among others.

Tokenized Securities – Digital Shares

The Faer Isles Distillery crowdfunding will be managed through a Security Token Offering. An STO is similar to an IPO (Initial Public Offering) as it enables people to invest in a company. The difference is that the shares are not traded on a traditional stock exchange but instead via a digital blockchain platform. This method is becoming more and more common for startups, but Faer Isles Distillery will probably be the first whisky distillery in the world that will allow crypto currencies as means of funding.

Traditional financial securities such as stocks and bonds are increasingly moved to the blockchain infrastructure due to the many benefits of this technology. The main benefits are that shares and bonds are digitized, and the online trading of these digital securities becomes possible without relying on any middlemen that charge you. The World Economic Forum predicts that 10% of the global GDP ($7.8 trillion) will be stored on the blockchain by 2027.

A security token is regulated by your country’s jurisdiction. We will use a digital share register based on the ERC-20(Ethereum) blockchain standard, which is approved by the EU. This is basically a very efficient and consistent way to create a digital share register to keep track of all the micro-owners registered through our crowdfunding.

A Good Way to Invest

Everyone who invests in (or later trades) shares will need to go through the KYC procedure (unique identification), which is governed by EU legislation, ensuring protection against money laundering (AML) and similar problems that have previously been connected with crypto funding.

As mentioned above, tokenized shares are more easily tradable than normal shares on stock exchanges. This makes it easier for whisky enthusiasts to use Faer Isles Distillery shares as an investment option that they can later trade. So the upside from an investor point of view would be both the (potential) annual dividends, the (potential) price gains of the share, but also the avoidance of trading fees for middlemen. Since so few companies are yet to be traded this way, tokenized shares are highly attractive to investors owning any form of crypto currency. The tokenized shares in Faer Isles Distillery, therefore, can be regarded as an alternative investment form – even for people with little interest in whisky.

The Value of First Edition Whiskies

 

We are immensely happy about the great interest in becoming a member of our Founders’ Club. Several aspiring members with limited knowledge of the market for single malts from startup distilleries, however, have asked why the price of the membership is 200€. It’s a fair question, considering the average cost of a bottle of gin + a bottle of whisky (which is part of your reward package as a member).

Of course, we believe your membership subscription is partly your way of supporting us. But we also want you to feel that it is good value for money.

The membership entitles you to lifelong discounts for events, products etc. plus discount on your potential purchase of shares in the company. But if we ignore that for a moment, the market price for quality single malts from acknowledged startup craft distilleries is extremely high. The simple reason is that demand is so incredibly much higher than the supply. Quality craft distilleries are few with low production output, and the global number of us single malt lovers is very high. Also, 1. editions tend to become collectors items or investment objects that are stored or traded rather than consumed.

To illustrate, here are a few examples of the cost of 1. editions from distilleries that have been created within the last 15 years. I have chosen some examples from Denmark, as I think the proximity may be a relevant factor.


1 DKK = 0.13€ 

 

The Global Whisky Market

All available data indicate that the supply of malt whisky is not keeping pace with growing demand.

Despite the growing number of distilleries (over 100 new distilleries in the last five year alone) and the plans of many existing distilleries to increase production, it seems that this trend is not endangered in the long run.

This is the reason why we see established distilleries putting so many NAS (No Age Statement) bottles on the market. They simply do not have enough aged whisky in their stock to meet the demand.

In 2019, Scotch whisky export reached record levels both in volume and value. The Scotch Whisky Association, citing the HM Revenue & Customs data, announced that Scotch whisky export reached £4.91 billion last year, which was an increase of 4.4% compared to 2018.

If you want to see whisky as an investment, it is one the most profitable investment objects of alternative assets. For many years, rates of return on investment in whisky have been very high, beating other alternative investments, such as rare coins, wine, art and watches.

The uniqueness of investments in whisky is that it is independent of financial markets, so even an economic crisis does not affect them. Premium and super-premium spirits are virtually recession-proof. It seems that in hard times, people drink less but better. Between 2008, the year the financial crisis began, and 2015, Britain’s overall consumption of whisky declined 19.6%. But sales of the much more expensive single malt whisky went up 5.5%.
It seems, a recession is a good time to start a business dealing in top-of-the-range spirits such as malt whiskies and premium gins.

A few resources to read more

The Craft Distillers’ Handbook – by Ted Bruning, Lovely Moon Publishing, 2. ed 2017
The Science and Commerce of Whisky – by Buxton & Hughes, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014
Whisky: Technology, Production and Marketing – by Inge Russel, Academic Press, 2015
Stillnovisti Whisky Investment

Vlog 10.08.20

Greetings from our founder, Bogi Mouritsen.

To read more about the project and buy your Faer Isles Founders’ Club membership, go to: www.faer.io

A word from the founders

Faer Isles Whisky

The wild, untouched Faroe Islands are unique. Located remotely in the North Atlantic, in the cleanest waters in the world. The rough ocean provides salty winds in abundance, which creates the perfect condition for aging whisky. Produced in our distillery and matured in our warehouse placed between untamed nature and the unfathomable beauty of The Faroe Islands. Here FAER ISLES WHISKY is born, in perfect surroundings.