WILLIAM GRANT WAREHOUSING, GIRVAN

Design and construction of storage warehousing for over 20 years

The William Grant framework has involved designing and constructing over forty storage warehouses, anaerobic digestion plants, offices and associated infrastructure over a twenty-year period.

Our work with William Grant has also included refurbishing 10 existing warehouses and installing an anaerobic digestion plant.

Construction works have been carried out within a working distillery, in compliance with the regulations and restrictions applicable to working within a bonded distillery.  Due to the potentially hazardous nature of storing alcohol, the warehouses were designed and built under strict control measures to comply with the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) Regulations 1999 requirements.

Bonded Warehouses

We recently constructed four bonded whisky maturation warehouses at William Grant Distillers’ site in Girvan, Ayrshire. Each warehouse is 5,000 sq m and 11.5m internal height to allow cask stacking. The warehouses are typically twin portal steel-framed structures with blockwork walls to dado height and composite insulated cladding to walls and roof.

Each warehouse is divided into internal compartments/cells ranging in size between 1,000 sqm and 2,500 sqm with 2-hour fire separation. Sprinkler systems were installed to comply with the building regulations and insurance requirements.

Anaerobic Digestion Plant

In addition to the ongoing design and construction of the warehouse development ‘masterplan’ at Girvan, we have also carried out several other challenging and interesting projects in conjunction with the Grants Engineering and Development Department. These projects assist immensely in ensuring that sustainability and carbon reduction principles are integrated with the future development of the whisky manufacturing process, and ultimately, they seek to provide the best overall value achieved throughout the fermentation and distillation processes.

Such projects have included the design and construction of anaerobic reactors to convert process waste products into methane gas, which in turn generates electricity via gas turbines. We have also been heavily involved in the design, development, and construction of a new biogas facility that adopts similar reusable methods to the anaerobic process.

Curragh Phase 2B

Our team works very closely with Grants, often providing a full ‘turn-key’ service from project inception and planning, gaining planning and building warrant approvals, carrying out geotechnical, environmental, archaeological and topographical surveys, together with full feasibility studies right through to construction management and site delivery. Within the warehouse projects, our in-house engineering team have been able to influence foundation design to the extent that considerable savings have been made to the warehouse design.