Jump Ship Brewing has smashed a crowdfunding target in just 48 hours, solidifying plans for the summer opening of a purpose-built 20-hectolitre brewery in Midlothian.
Scotland’s only woman-owned non-alcoholic brewing company has also welcomed Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne, chair of Scotland Food and Drink, to its advisory board. She brings more than 20 years’ experience in the industry as a chef, teacher, entrepreneur, and board director.
The new brewery will be based at Rosemain Steadings, just outside Pathhead in Midlothian, and will allow Jump Ship Brewing to produce up to 800,000 litres of exclusively non-alcoholic beer a year.
The new development will create an additional three full-time equivalent jobs this year, with recruitment for a new head of sales starting this week. The ambitious company aims to continue to innovate and expand its product range.
“Within two days of our Seedrs campaign launching publicly, we hit our target of £280,000, and I have watched in awe as this figure continued to grow,” said brewery managing director Sonja Mitchell.
“We’re currently sitting at £329,000 from over 266 investors. This is fantastic news, and we’re thrilled to be able to announce the plans for our new brewery, the first exclusively non-alcoholic brewery in Scotland. There’s a huge and growing demand for drinks in the no and low category and we’ve always focused on the quality and flavour of our range of beers. This funding is testament to that and will allow us to increase our volumes and reach wider markets.
“This capital will be used to bring our production totally in house, allowing us to stabilise prices, optimise our use of renewable energy with access to a state of the art biomass generator and solar power, and, most importantly, will allow us to reach more people with our fantastic range of beers.
“That Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne has joined our advisory board at such an exciting time for Jump Ship Brewing is hugely exciting, and we hugely welcome her strategic direction, expertise and energy.”
Lucinda added: “It’s an exciting time in the low and no alcohol category as we continue to see the rise in the sober curious. I’m looking forward to working with Sonja and her team as part of this hugely innovative and flavour-focused business as they start this journey towards expansion.”
Jump Ship Brewing has a core range of four beers, from lager to IPA. In 2021, its Yardarm lager won best alcohol-free lager in the world at the World Beer Awards.
Jump Ship Brewing has a strong charitable focus at its heart, with a commitment from the outset to donate at least 10% of its profits to a variety of charities. These are nominated by Jump Ship’s customers, or ‘ship mates’ as they are described.
