Oamaru to get whisky distillery

NZ Whisky Co general Manager Grant Finn outside the company's cellar door shop in Oamaru's Victorian Precinct. Photo / Andrew Ashton

After years of uncertainty, the New Zealand Whisky Company has confirmed Oamaru will be the site of a planned $3 million distillery.

In April last year, the Otago Daily Times reported the company had yet to decide whether to establish a distillery in Oamaru or Dunedin.

This was after a December 2016 report in the ODT in which Whisky Company chief executive Troy Trewin reiterated plans going back more than four years to build a distillery, estimating the company had "about four to five years' whisky left''.

The company's general manager, Grant Finn, of Oamaru, said this week, he could not specify which of "a number of sites'' the company was interested in, but "certainly Oamaru''.

"We're not there yet,'' Mr Finn said. "But ... we know the precinct is a great place for tourists and they're our biggest clients. In store it would be European tourists, hands down. So if we can yield from a location on the periphery of the precinct, or within the precinct - that's brilliant.

"I think we can be more of a name, and stand out, in Oamaru. If you look at Dunedin, it's a very competitive landscape for experiential tourism: you've got Emerson's, you've got Speight's, you've got your Cadbury World. We want to have everything under one roof, where you can actually bring in people and do the experience.''

The whisky company initially bought 450 barrels of whisky in October 2010, which originated from the former Wilsons distillery in Willowbank, Dunedin.

Mr Finn said, since a board restructuring in August 2016, the company was now committed to production.

Since December 2016, through a third-party contractor in Christchurch, the company had "put into cask'' thousands of litres of whisky which was now in storage in Oamaru. But the company wanted to have its own production.

Previously reported to be a $1million to $2million distillery development, now the project would include "full production''.

The earlier amount discussed would have allowed for distillation only, Mr Finn said, but current plans for a $3 million development for "the full works ... the grain silo, the mashing, etcetera''.

Mr Finn said the company's master blender, James McKenzie, had recently returned from Melbourne and Tasmania, where he viewed 13 distilleries over four days.

Once the company had secured the still, production could begin in Oamaru as soon as September this year, he said.