A brewery which faced uncertainty after a wholesaler went bust owing it thousands of pounds has fought its way back to award-winning ways.
The Celt Experience, based at Caerphilly’s Pontygwindy Industrial Estate, was left with a £50,000 hole in its finances when drinks wholesaler Waverley TBS went bust last year.
To make matters worse, the Caerphilly company could do nothing to try and claim the money from administrators as what was owed was from a contract brewing job.
Brewery director Tom Newman explained: “It wasn’t even our product. We were doing some contract brewing for another company who had a relationship with Waverley and we were doing their still beer for them.
“When Waverley went down they went back to this company and said they weren’t being paid for this. We were owed £50,000 and couldn’t claim any of it back.”
Instead of giving up and folding, Mr Newman and his team increased their efforts and decided to experiment with their own beers. The result, nine months on from Waverley going under, is that the lost business has been made up from new orders and turnover is now topping the £1 million a year mark.
A new investor is on board and the company is gearing up for expansion to take its number of employees to 15.
Mr Newman said: “After Waverley, we just started doing things exactly the way we wanted to do them. We weren’t going to take on any more contract business like before and I decided that we would focus on our own brands.
“It gave me the licence to say I will do what I want. From that point, we’ve already replaced all of the lost business and grown 10%.”
Despite the huge loss, Mr Newman said the Celt Experience would not have gone under itself as he would not have let it.
He added: “It was a case of I’ll do what I have to do, deal with what’s in front of us and take it to the next level.”
Mr Newman praised his team for their role in pulling through and the future now looks brighter again with the company picking up business “left, right and centre”.
The Celt Experience, which exports its beer across the globe, is also back to its award-winning ways.
Two months ago it won the overall category at the Society of Independent Brewers’ Awards as well as the award for the Wales and West of England region.
The company has also just added another two awards with two of their beers in Tokyo at the prestigious International Beer Competition.
The brewery will be holding a celebratory barbecue on September 28. Visit www.celtexperience.com for more details.