OakNorth provides £7.5m loan to Royal Elizabeth Yard for Scotland’s largest independent whisky warehousing facility
OakNorth has provided a £7.5m ($9.4m) loan to support the expansion of Royal Elizabeth Yard, a 50-acre site near South Queensferry being transformed into Scotland’s largest independent bonded whisky warehousing facility. The funding will refinance existing debt and support the conversion of several existing sheds into bonded whisky maturation warehouses.
Located less than seven miles from Edinburgh city centre, the former World War II naval storage depot has planning consent to develop up to 830,000 square feet of bonded warehousing.
The site will have capacity to mature over 1.1 million casks once fully developed.
“This funding from OakNorth is a significant milestone for Royal Elizabeth Yard as we continue to develop the site into a world-class bonded whisky maturation facility,” said Alan Wright, head of operations at Royal Elizabeth Yard.
“Demand for independent storage capacity remains strong, and this facility gives us the flexibility to invest in the infrastructure required to support distillers and cask owners over the long term.”
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The facility is being repositioned from traditional industrial use to provide long-term storage, handling and compliance services for third-party whisky producers and cask owners.
Royal Elizabeth Yard’s proximity to Edinburgh Airport and the Queensferry Crossing offers distillers and whisky investors a strategically located storage solution within Scotland’s Central Belt.
“Royal Elizabeth Yard is a unique asset with a compelling long-term strategy, underpinned by strong fundamentals in the Scotch whisky sector,” said Fraser McPhail, senior director of debt finance at OakNorth.
“The site’s scale, location and extensive planning consents position it well to address the structural shortage of independent bonded warehousing capacity in Scotland.”
OakNorth has indicated strong appetite to support future consented new-build development at the site.
Scotland’s whisky industry has experienced significant growth in recent years, with exports reaching £6.2bn ($7.8bn) in 2023 according to the Scotch Whisky Association.
The expansion of independent warehousing capacity addresses growing demand from both established distilleries and new market entrants seeking flexible storage solutions without significant capital investment in their own infrastructure.
