AK's Gin
AK's Gin

Arbikie pushes on in sustainability drive

A Scots distiller is working to gets its new visitor centre ready to open next spring, as it continues with its green credentials.

Arbikie Highland Estate is a 400-year-old family farming business based on Scotland’s sunny east coast. In 2014, the Stirling brothers opened the Arbikie Distillery on the Estate with a plan to combine the best of farming and traditional distilling with innovation.

Over the last few years, their focus has been on making Arbikie one of the world’s most sustainable distilleries, and have a clear mission to become the global leader in a new category of single-estate, field-to-bottle, sustainable spirits.

Arbikie is involved in a number of climate-related projects, from partnering with ecoSPIRITS to remove single-use glass bottles from their supply chain, to implementing hydrogen as part of the UK Government’s Green Distillery competition.

The aim is to deliver a zero-carbon distillery which can be replicated across the distillation industry and highlight the opportunities for the acceleration of the hydrogen economy.

They will be opening their new distillery experience in April 2022 allowing visitors to come and experience what they do first-hand.

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A spokesman said: ‘All of our practices are based on a sustainable ethos built on four key principles:

‘Authenticity – Arbikie Distillery is a genuine field to bottle operation. From start to finish, all our spirits are distilled on-site and retain the evocative taste of our unique environment.

‘Sustainability – We grow our own crops. We use our own water. We grow our own juniper and botanicals. We are expanding our use of solar energy. Our primary waste products are recycled as cattle feed, or used as a natural fertiliser.

‘Traceability – Every crop used to make our spirits can be traced to its field of origin. Our distillery conducts every stage of production possible on-site.

‘Innovation – Our mission is to set new standards in the industry with the aim to be the first climate positive distillery in the world.

‘In terms of innovation, we focused on distilling the world’s first climate-positive spirits with NĂ dar Gin and Vodka in 2020 by distilling peas to create a base spirit that removes 1.54kg of CO2e from the atmosphere. This was achieved following years of research by our Master Distiller and plant scientist, Kirsty Black.’

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