Find our carbon footprint report at the following link;

InchDairnie Distillery Carbon Footprint Report

Sustainability is important to Inchdairnie Distillery and low energy consumption was part of the original process design. Three strategies were used in developing the design;

Reduce – The process was developed to reduce at source the energy demand of the various process steps.

Reuse – Some the remaining waste energy from the distillation process is reused to provide heat for the mashing process, pre heating the still charge and to provide heating for the office.

Recycle –  Some of the waste energy from the distillation process is recycled back into the stills.

In order to help in identifying opportunities to further improve our energy use and to widen the scope of our sustainability activities we, with assistance from Scottish Enterprise, commissioned an initial carbon footprint assessment in 2019 looking back at distillation year 2018.

Following some significant changes in 2019 and 2020 we commissioned a second report considering these changes. The changes being, moving our electricity supply contract to wind power from Orstead in 2019 and supplying all our pot ale and draff to the local anaerobic digestor (AD). This example of the circular economy at work allows the AD plant to supply the gas produced from its own process into the gas network where we take our gas supply from.

Sustainability has become a word that gets dropped into almost any mention of a brand and often in a meaningless fashion. We believe that sustainability needs to be more than words, it needs to be measured. What is measured gets managed.

Carbon footprint measurement is a relatively new process and several different approaches can be taken and several different assumptions can be made. This makes it difficult to compare one product with another or to compare similar products from different suppliers.

If the whisky industry is to make a significant contribution to achieving net zero carbon it needs to measure its performance in a meaningful and consistent manner. Shared carbon footprint performance can be a powerful tool.

By publishing our Carbon Footprint calculation in full, we aim to open the debate on how carbon footprints for the whisky industry should be calculated, leading to a consistent approach.

We welcome comments on our report through our dedicated email address, carbonfootprint@inchdairniedistillery.com

Ian Palmer