Food manufacturing excellence awards
Dr Andy Wood
For Adnams boss Dr Andy Wood, diversification is the future of the 142 year-old business he’s headed for the last four years.
Although the Southwold-based brewer pumps out around 30M pints of beer a year, contributing significantly to the company’s £60M annual turnover, Wood has worked hard to open a series of cafes and a new distilling arm, which produced its first whiskies at the end of last year.
For what Wood says was a “modest” investment – just shy of £1M – Adnams is now the first UK brewer to distil spirits on the same premises as it brews beer. And for those who think beer and spirits don’t mix, Adnams sold more than 500 bottles of its whisky in just 90 minutes of it going on sale.
While the company is pursuing new avenues, Wood is also pressing ahead with a £1.5M investment to expand the capacity of the Sole Bay Brewery in Southwold, where the company has been headquartered since 1872. “It’s about a UK manufacturer investing in a UK manufacturing plant,” he chirps when asked.
Although he’s in the driving-seat of a successful medium-sized brewery, Wood is optimistic that consumer interest in premium beers will drive the market forward and nurture the development of more microbreweries.
His work to develop a greener and leaner business is notorious both in and out of the sector and eternalised in the book Creating a Lean and Green Business System, which he co-authored. Wood’s desire for an ever environmentally friendly business is also reflected in Adnams’s Suffolk Costal green distribution centre, which has energy savings of £49,000 a year.
The work he has carried out to secure an ancient brewing business for future generations, as well as his passion to do it in an environmentally friendly way, makes Wood a noble candidate for Food Manufacture Personality of the year.
For more on Wood, read our Big Interview.