Cask dealership firm upgrades warehouse machinery

Spiritfilled, the Fife-based cask dealership, has just rolled out some serious warehouse upgrades at their Braeside Bond facility in Newburgh – and frankly, it’s about time someone took cask handling this seriously.

The bond itself has been making waves since opening twelve months ago. We’re talking 20,000 square feet overlooking the River Tay with capacity for around 14,000 casks – that’s substantial storage real estate that’s already attracting distillers, collectors, and importers from across the globe.

What’s caught my attention is their latest kit investment, particularly this German-made Jungheinrich electric forklift. Now, you might think a forklift’s just a forklift, but this 5-tonne beast comes with some clever atmospheric monitoring tech – it actually checks for vapours before firing up, which is exactly the kind of safety thinking you want around your precious liquid assets.

The real game-changers though are the McGowan Engineering attachments they’ve added – a cask rotator and tilter that mount directly onto the forklift carriage. The rotator handles palletising filled casks without the usual rough handling, while the tilter works with their new racking system to properly stow both standard barrels (200L) and hogsheads (250L) – basically covering the two formats that matter most in the private investment market.

Operations manager Torin Currie makes a compelling point about asset protection – reducing wear and damage during long-term maturation isn’t just good practice, it’s essential for maintaining value. Plus, having transparent, audit-ready storage practices keeps HMRC happy and gives investors real confidence in how their casks are being treated.

This follows their earlier six-figure investment in advanced racking, so clearly Spiritfilled is serious about positioning Braeside Bond as premium storage. Given how the private whisky investment market has evolved, this kind of professional approach to cask handling could well set a new standard for the industry.