Shropshire Star

Ellesmere manufacturer taps into craft beer boom

The growth in craft beers around the UK is helping a Shropshire manufacturer diversify into new markets.

Published
Welding at Febdec

Fabdec was set up in 1960 to manufacture refrigerated milk tanks – and is adapting those products to allow it to enter more overseas territories.

But while the improving milk price and access to new markets are helping the Ellesmere company drive sales within the dairy industry, it is also benefiting from the boom in craft beer production in the UK.

Fabdec has made stainless steel tanks and vessels for microbreweries across the UK, including Aston Manor, Hedgedog, Brightside, Kite and The Friday Beer Co.

"We have diversified into spares for the dairy markets," said managing director Chris Powell.

"But using our core skills in stainless steel and tanks and vessels we have been quite busy with micro breweries.

"There are a few opening each year, and it is in vogue at the moment with craft beers."

Sales in the brewery division have doubled this year, the company said, which has helped drive overall growth in the business of about 15 per cent, taking the Ellesmere company to turnover of about £13.5 million.

The improvement also comes on the back of new designs allowing the company, which employs 110 people at Ellesmere having added six more in the first part of the year, to explore new markets and capitalise on a reinvirogated UK dairy sector.

"We are exporting to mainland Europe and started off by getting enquiries to sell to Russia," Mr Powell said. "In 2002 we opened an office and warehouse in Saint Petersburg, through which we sell milk cooling tanks and spares.

"Where we are now is 50 per cent of our turnover is in exports. We sell everywhere, in Germany, Ireland, Austria, France, Russia, and also Japan and Africa.

"When your are exporting large products that can be very expensive, so we designed one to fit in a shipping container to make it better for transportation.

"That has opened up a new market we have never really sold to, in the USA, and we started selling there at the end of last year.

"It's still in its early days but the fact we have designed a tank we can ship to the States will help the tank production side of the business. We are developing in the States, and looking at how we can develop in other countries too."

The home market is also becoming more buoyant, as farmers find their incomes improve on the back of a spike in farm gate milk prices.

"In the last couple of years the dairy industry has faced things like Russian sanctions on dairy products, and that has affected the milk price," Mr Powell added.

"What we have seen over this years and towards the last quarter of last year is the milk price increasing and in the UK market we have been pretty busy."