WORK on a new distillery is to get underway in the Leith area of Edinburgh next year after the firm behind the project secured £10 million of financial backing from a group of 20 private investors.

Founders Paddy Fletcher and Ian Stirling raised the finance for the Port of Leith Distillery after a six-year period in which first the original funding and then the location of the project fell through.

“It all kicked off because I worked in the wine trade and used to export to South East Asia,” Mr Stirling said.

“A very wealthy client of mine in China said he would fund it when I first mentioned it, but over the course of six years we found a site and lost the investor then found new investors but lost the site.

“The moment we found our current site we decided that the way to approach this was to raise enough money to design the building, secure planning permission and set up a little gin distillery, and then raise the rest of the money.”

The firm currently rents a still house on Tower Street in Leith, from where it produces its recently released Lind and Lime gin and distributes a sherry whose casks will be used to mature the single malt it will produce when the new distillery is up and running.

Work on the site is due to begin in the spring with the distillery, which will feature a visitor centre, expected to open in August 2020. Mr Sinclair said the project’s backers include a range of private individuals from the UK, America, France and Hong Kong who are all understand the long-term nature of investing in scotch whisky.

“We’re very fortunate to have been able to put together a group of investors who are on board with the long-term vision of this,” he said.