Palletways shakes off dry January with Craft Beer Contract Win

A logistics firm in Edinburgh has marked the end of dry January with an uptick in deliveries it handles on behalf of a local microbrewery.

Just over a year after signing a nationwide contract with Vault City Brewing, one of the UK’s best-selling sour beer brands, Palletways Edinburgh is celebrating a four-fold growth in volumes and is now shipping craft beer to more than 1,100 supermarkets across the country.

Passionate home brewer, Steven Smith-Hay, co-founded Vault City Brewing in 2018. The business started from a kitchen, which was registered as a brewery, while beer was produced in the cellar and the spare room was set aside for customs and excise and warehousing. The team has experienced massive growth since its launch. It brewed around 1,000 litres in its first year and today, it produces close-on half a million litres annually. Vault City Brewing is Scotland’s largest sour beer producer, and its products are stocked in major supermarkets and in more than 200 bars across Edinburgh.

After being announced as the best-selling craft beer in Tesco, where it occupies shelf space in more than 600 UK stores, Vault City Brewing entered in a new deal with supermarket giant Morrisons in the summer. This has required Palletways Edinburgh to now transport around 200 pallets every month for the firm.

Commenting, Steven said: “We appointed Palletways Edinburgh as the team were able to demonstrate a clear understanding of our logistics requirements. Its experience of distribution within the FMCG industry to multi-channel retailers gave us the confidence to hire them. The fact they’re a local business is a bonus! Given our recent supermarket win, the Palletways team has demonstrated they have the resilience and resource to cope with an uptick in volumes, and can also deliver on time, which is reassuring for an ambitious, growing business such as ours.”

Vanda Roberts, Senior General Manager at Palletways Edinburgh, added: “This is a great partnership between two Edinburgh businesses, and we couldn’t be happier to now work even more closely with Vault City Brewing which has quickly carved out an iconic status across the City.”

Vault City Brewing makes heavily fruited, modern sour beers in Portobello, Edinburgh. Alongside its core range of Strawberry Sundae and Cloudy Lemonade, it releases at least three new limited beers every two to three weeks.