Solarsoft and Bruichladdich Celebrate First 10 Year Old Bottling

Solarsoft joins whisky distillery Bruichladdich to celebrate its first 10 year old bottling since re-opening!

Bruichladdich, a small, privately-owned Scottish whisky distillery reached a pivotal milestone this week when the latest ten year old Bruichladdich single malt whisky rolled-off the bottling line on the remote Atlantic Isle of Islay, with a little help from Solarsoft’s Tropos ERP software.

Basingstoke, UK - 15th December 2011 - Bruichladdich specialises in producing artisanal single malt whisky. And now, 10 years after the re-opening in 2001, the first bottles of Bruichladdich Laddie Ten, rolled from the production line marking another great moment for the successful Islay distillers.

Due to Bruichladdich's rapid growth, some of the biggest challenges faced have included constraints in monitoring efficiency, optimising production activities, and difficulty in reconciling stock numbers, with many core processes and data collection handled manually using spreadsheets.

This prompted the distillery to approach Solarsoft to deliver a solution, based on its expertise and comprehensive portfolio of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. Bruichladdich chose Solarsoft's core Tropos ERP system, specifically designed for process manufacturing. This includes Tropos Whisky Workbench module which provides complete control over cask stocks and blending. Together, these products allow the distillery to record, track and manage all orders, stock levels, production planning, bottling/packing and despatch on an end-to-end basis.

Simon Coughlin, Operations Director at Bruichladdich observes "Solarsoft Tropos is completely embedded in our organisation. Tropos is a 'live' system, with accurate, up-to-date, integrated data from right across the business, including bulk, production, bottling and despatch. Tropos links everything together seamlessly, even integrating with our i2i export document management system, another solution that Solarsoft recommended, which takes care of export paperwork. The Solarsoft solution is all-encompassing and has greatly assisted in sustaining our continued growth and improved business operations."

Chris Wheway, Principal Consultant and Project Manager from Solarsoft, who was attending the Bruichladdich celebrations adds, "The top down implementation ethos was pivotal to the success of the Tropos implementation along with the eagerness to change and improve shown by the whole Bruichladdich team. The traceability Tropos provides supports Bruichladdich's strive to show provenance in its products, tracking Islay organically grown barley from field to bottle. The process of generating export documents and HMRC reporting has now become a by-product of the system rather than a manual chore. Bruichladdich are now moving to the latest version Tropos 4 and deploying Tropos Mobile into their new warehousing facility this autumn, ensuring they continue to streamline their business processes and focus on their core business developments and innovations."

Shareholders, suppliers and distributors enjoyed a celebration luncheon with fresh Islay produce and drinks to mark the celebrations and visitors also enjoyed good company, a free barbeque and the opportunity to buy one special limited edition Laddie Ten with an "I Was There" label which sold out rapidly. More information on the event can be found at www.bruichladdich.com.