Whisky producer Diageo has stopped malt production at its Roseisle Maltings in Moray on a temporary basis, responding to weakened demand across the Scotch whisky sector. The company emphasised that the site remains open, staff continue working on-site or have been redeployed, and future plans are still under review. Nonetheless, industry sources say the facility is not expected to accept any grain from the next harvest, intensifying growers’ concerns.
The Roseisle site, operating since 1981 with an annual capacity of around 35,000 tonnes, has long relied on locally sourced spring barley. Farmers in Moray fear the temporary halt may evolve into a longer-term slowdown, particularly as spring barley producers already report heavy financial losses this year. Many growers have shifted towards winter crops and oilseed rape due to the uncertainty surrounding malting barley demand.
A second blow to the sector within days, as Bairds Malt anounced the closure of its Pencaitland Maltings, as reported by The East Lothian Courier on Monday. Built in 1978 and currently operating with a 47,000-tonne annual malt production capacity in batches of around 165 tonnes of barley, the shutdown will lead to 19 redundancies. The site is dedicated solely to producing malt for the distilling industry. Bairds Malt, which is part of Soufflet Malt (a subsidiary of Fench agrigroup InVivo), continues to operate four additional malting sites in the UK in Inverness, Arbroath, Witham and Shobnall, as well as a grain storage facility in Turriff.
These setbacks contrast sharply with the optimism seen just a year earlier. In 2024, the same company, Bairds Malt anounced an expansion of the malting capacity at its Inverness site (inside.beer, 29.02.2024), while Crisp Malt, part of Richardson International, said to quadruple the capacity at its Portgordon Maltings (inside.beer, 29.4.2024) and Boortmalt announced further development of two of its Scottish operations to meet expected long-term growth (inside.beer, 16.12.2024). These investments reflected market expectations at the time but now stand in stark contrast to the current contraction.
It can be assumed that most of these plans will either never materialise or be postponed far into the future in the hope of a sector-wide recovery. Simpson Malt, the UK family-owned maltster, already did so earlier this year when it applied in May 2025 to extend the planning permission for its proposed 100,000-tonne malting plant at Greens of Rothes in the heart of Scotch whisky country by a further five years until December 2030.
Jack Stevenson, National Farmers Union Scotland’s (NFUS) combinable crops chair, warns that reduced barley contracting at local maltings threatens both farm income and the provenance credentials valued by the Scotch whisky industry as reportet by The P&J. With Scotch whisky contributing roughly GBP 5 billion (USD 5.0 billion) annually, the sector typically requires about 900,000 tonnes of malting barley each year. NFUS is currently working with the Scotch Whisky Association and the Agricultural Industries Confederation to improve contract clarity, sustainability practices and carbon-reduction initiatives. Meanwhile, new figures by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) show that UK farmers have expanded the oilseed rape area by 30% to 391,000 hectares for the next harvest, driven by stronger yield performance and more favourable margins compared to other crops.
