West, the fledgling specialist brewery, restaurant and beer hall based at Glasgow Green, is set to expand its current beer-making operation and open a second brewery in the city’s East End with an investment of more than £2m, The Herald has learned.

Petra Wetzel, West’s German-born founder and owner, said the expansion was being driven by increased demand for its portfolio of specialist beers, all of which are made to the strict standards of the Reinheitsgebot of 1516, the medieval German beer purity law.

West’s biggest-selling lager is St Mungo, named after the patron saint of Glasgow, whose brotherhood used to brew their own beer and serve the “liquid bread” to the poor and sickly people of Clydeside.

The operation, which is based behind the imposing Venetian-style facade of the Templeton Building on Glasgow Green, currently employs a staff of 28.

Wetzel, 34, who recently struck a deal with curry entrepreneur Charan Gill to develop a new premium lager for his Slumdog restaurant, said the new brewery will create a further 25 jobs.

She also said the new venture would be funded without bank debt, but with the help of private investors. Hilary Jones, a former brewer for Newcastle Brown Ale, Fosters, Kronenbourg and McEwan’s, earlier this year invested in a minority shareholding in West. The bulk of the rest of the business is owned by Wetzel and her parents.

Wetzel said: “We expect the building work on the new brewery to begin next spring, and we hope to have it up and running by the end of 2010.

“The expansion is completely driven by the demand for what we make here – that is, very fine beer to the highest standards of the Reinheitsgebot. You’ll find nothing artificial at this brewery.

“As it is, we’re already being approached to provide larger quantities of our beer than we are currently able to make.

“Even with the expansion here at Glasgow Green – which will increase our brewing capacity by 50% – it’s still not enough.

“At the moment, we’re moving about 10 kegs of beer a week for some of our customers, but we are getting approaches from restaurants and hotel chains that could easily raise that to 50 kegs a week for some customers, and we just don’t have the capacity to satisfy that.”

West already supplies its specialist beers to a number of outlets, including Bar 91 and the GFT in Glasgow, as well as various festivals, most recently Proms in the Park at Glasgow Green, where, according to Wetzel, “they drank us dry”.

The brewery, which this year won three gold medals from the DLG, the prestigious Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft (German Agricultural Society) – the first time that any lager brewed in the UK received a medal from the DLG – also supplies a specialist King Tut brand of premium lager to King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, the renowned Glasgow concert venue.

Wetzel said the precise location for the new brewery could not be revealed because negotiations were still ongoing.

She said: “I can only tell you that it will be in the East End of Glasgow, about a mile and a half from where we are now, and that it’s now a brown field site, so we’re building from scratch – but the terms are still being negotiated.”

Wetzel said the new brewery will be the “most energy efficient brewery in Europe – maybe in the world”.


The Herald

20 September 2009