Dublin liqueur distillery enters liquidation after failing to secure investment in restructuring

Stillgarden Distillery, the Dublin 8-based independent producer of Italian amari liqueurs, has ceased trading and entered voluntary liquidation.The company “has not succeeded” in a “lengthy search” conducted this year to raise new investment to sustain the business, it announced on Thursday morning. It had sought an experienced international managing director to lead the company, which sells its products in Ireland and Britain, to “the next stage of growth”.“Despite months of work and conversations with a range of potential investors, no deal was secured, and the company could not afford to keep going on its own,” the distillery said in a statement announcing its closure. Based on Tyrconnell Road in Inchicore, Dublin 8, Stillgarden Distillery was set up in February 2020 by husband and wife Pat O’Brien and Victoria Baird and their business partner Damien Heary. READ MOREIt produced Irish amari, a herbal liqueur typically drunk as a digestif after dinner, as well as other similar products, and was sold in the UK through supplier Master of Malt.Sales rose as the Covid-19 pandemic eased and reached close to €400,000 in 2023, according to the distillery. However, heightened production costs and a tightened market space forced the team to restructure in 2024, narrowing the range of products on offer just to break even. Baird, the distillery’s managing director, said: “We have done everything we could to keep Stillgarden going.”“We made the business leaner, built a brand that people loved here and in the UK and put everything into finding the right investor to take it to the next level,” she said. “What a small independent distillery needs is capital, and we simply could not keep funding it ourselves.”Abridged financial accounts for the distillery’s parent company, Disruptive Spirits, from the 2024 financial year show the business owed substantial sums of money to its two directors, with more than €550,00 repayable to Baird and more than €39,000 due to O’Brien.The company made a €833,000 loss in income by the end of 2024, the accounts show, and received €60,000 in Government grants to support the business’ operations.