An Abergavenny couple have expanded their award-winning wine making business after Landsker Business Solutions secured £190k of funding for them. The money, which was part loan and part grant (Food Business Accelerator Scheme), enabled Robb Merchant MBE and wife Nicola, owners of White Castle Vineyard, to build an on site processing plant, one of just three in Wales.
The ultra modern and innovative processing plant means that grapes from the 13,500 vines grown at White Castle can be processed on site, reducing the carbon footprint and ensuring sustainability going forward. The couple grow 8 varieties of grape which produce a plethora of wine including, sparkling white and rose, still white and rose, 3 or 4 varieties of red, and a fortified wine, similar to Port. The wines have won multiple awards locally, nationally and worldwide, including Gold at the Decanter World Wine Awards 2021, and Gold in 2023 for their White Castle Pinot Noir Precoce Reserve 2021 at the Wine GB annual competition.
Robb and Nicola have a long history with Landsker Founder and Managing Director Jeremy Bowen Rees, having first met in 2009 through a Welsh Government grant scheme for Branding. Landsker have helped at various points since its fruition in 2009, but more recently Business Consultant Wayne Evans worked with the vineyard to secure the
£190,000 to enable the processing plant to be built.
Robb said,
“It has been wonderful working with Landsker and Wayne in particularly. He created an incredible Business and Financial Plan for us, wrote the application for both grant and loan, and worked diligently to ensure we were able to proceed with the next phase of our business. I have found Landkser to be very responsive to our requests and easy to contact, providing a professional and timely service”.
He continued,
“I was very impressed with the time both Jeremy and Wayne took in getting to know the processes of running a vineyard and they went above and beyond to understand the business and why this next step was so vital in our expansion and growth.I’m pleased to say that the first grapes to be proceed in our new processing plant were harvested last week and production is well underway. I would highly recommend that anyone who is looking for business advice contact Landsker, they might just be the catalyst in helping them to grow too”.
Landsker Business Consultant Wayne said,
“Part of the joy of working for Landsker is the diverse range of clients we have the privilege of working with. Robb and Nicola already had a thriving business and it was lovely to be able to help them achieve their next goal of opening the processing plant”.
If you are a business owner looking for help, advice or funding in any sector, please do get in touch via the website www.landsker.co.uk
Feature image: White Castle processing plant.
