Pernod Ricard invests US$250 million dollars in new Kentucky distillery

Pernod Ricard is to invest more than US$250 million dollars over the next five year in a carbon neutral facility in Kentucky for Jefferson’s Bourbon, it has announced. 

The state-of-the-art, carbon neutral distillery and aging warehouses will be sited in Marion County, Kentucky, as part of the company’s The American Whiskey Collective. It comes three years after the French spirits giant acquired the Bourbon brand’s owner, Castle Brands, during which times, sales of Jefferson’s have doubled in the US>

The new facility will raise the brand’s output to around capacity to around 7.5 million gallons a year and will also include a world class visitor center to welcome whiskey aficionados on the historic South Trail of Kentucky Bourbon, the company said.

The distillery is being designed to achieve LEED certification – an internationally recognized sustainability framework for healthy, efficient, carbon and cost-saving environmentally friendly buildings – including low carbon technologies such as as electrode boilers powered by certified renewable electricity, to ensure that fossil fuels are not used during bourbon production.

Construction is set to begin in January and due to be completed in 2025.

Pernod Ricard’s chairman and CEO Alexandre Ricard said that the American whiskey category was an extremely vibrant spirits category, and the company’s strategic investments over the last few years had proved successful. “Our philosophy of partnering with entrepreneurial brand founders, while preserving the heritage and terroir associated with the brands they created, has made us an established player in premium American Whiskey,” he said, pointing to the firms’s collaboration with Jefferson’s founder Trey Zoeller.

“This new investment will allow us to grow our share of category sales not only in the US, but also in export markets,” he said.

Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America, Ann Mukherjee, said that American whiskey was booming, and that Jefferson’s growth has been “phenomenal”.

“We’re very bullish on the brand’s potential, and we’re committed to making our new Jefferson’s facility one of the most exemplary distilleries in the world in order to achieve it,” she said.

Jefferson’s co-founder Trey Zoeller, who founded the company with his father Chet in 1997, said that after 25 years sourcing, contract and direct distilling, it was time for Jefferson’s “to take more control of [its]destiny”

“The carbon neutral, state-of-the-art distillery we are building would not be possible without Pernod Ricard’s forward thinking, integrity, and commitment to Jefferson’s and the Bourbon category’s future,” he said.

Pernod Ricard has recently announced investment of more than €400 million to extend and add more sustainable facilities to its Irish Distillers and Chivas Brothers brands recently.