Chamber helps to lubricate the wheels of the export business

Award-winning Wold Top Brewery finds new fans in Scandinavia, Canada and Serbia.

Pictured: Toasting their latest successes are Gill and Tom Mellor (standing) and Alex and Kate Balchin.

WOLD Top Brewery are savouring the taste of success as their beers are rapidly becoming the favourite of tipple of drinkers in far-flung places like Scandinavia, Canada and Serbia

The award-winning family-run micro brewery is one of the Chamber’s newest members and is appreciating the expertise of our documentation team in lubricating the wheels of their export business.

Wold Top Brewery, based just north of Driffield, at Hunmanby Grange, Wold Newton, uses traditional methods to produce high quality beers which combine the characters of the Yorkshire Wolds and the East Coast. They use high class home and Wolds grown malting barley and chalk filtered water from the farm’s own borehole to a produce a range of award-winning cask and bottled real ales.

Tom and Gill Mellor founded the brewery and are now helped by their daughter Kate, the brewery’s Export and Accounts Manager, and her husband Alex. Explaining why the company chose to join the Chamber, Kate said: “The documentation side of things is very helpful. We had to complete a EUR1 form which we hadn’t come across before when we exported beer to Poland. Geof Humphrey, who organises the Chamber Bridlington & Yorkshire Coast Business Awards at Bridlington Spa, where Wold Top raised a glass to winning the Overall Business of the Year Award in 2013, suggested the Chamber’s team would be able to help”.

Mum Gill said: “We do a lot of business in the Hull and Humber area and everyone at the Chamber was so helpful we thought it was high time we got ourselves organised and joined, especially with the City of Culture on the horizon.

“Hull has been an interesting journey for us, we’ve been going nearly 12 years now with the brewery and it took a while to get established, but Hull is now one of our biggest markets, we have a very big delivery day, which in fact is now two days – we can’t deliver everything in one trip.

“We’re pleased to have secured sales through garage shops on petrol forecourts as well as supermarkets like Asda, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose”.

Kate said: “The export side of the business is also doing well, we have a really good market in Italy and the Scandinavian markets are growing. The trip to Serbia was organised through the British Embassy – there’s quite a big ex-pat community out there. They have also recently promoted their beers at the Taste of Britain Campaign which was held in Poland in September.

“We recently sent a batch out to Canada, but it takes six weeks to get there – it’s quite strange to think of it bobbing about on the Atlantic Ocean, but the beer travels ok in its sealed containers”.

Kate joined the business after finishing her languages degree in French and Spanish, while her husband, Alex, studied biology.

Gill said: “Alex’s knowledge of biology is proving very useful and he’s helping us with our yeast management. His skills are improving our quality control and helping to keep things exactly right.”

Now they are Chamber members, Gill, Kate and the Wold Top team are looking forward to making use of the networking opportunities that come with membership, improving the awareness of their products among other businesses, finding new shipping contacts and benchmarking their progress with other local businesses operating as they do in more remote areas of the county.

“We are also looking at promoting the events side of our business, which can include corporate entertaining which can combine a brewery tour with a BBQ – and even wedding receptions”.

For more information, give the Wold Top Brewery team a call on (01723) 892222.

Alex Balchin pictured with some of Wold Top Brewery’s finest.