Business
It all began with eight friends, a dream and a few too many bottles of Scotch. Now Sween’s first and only malt whisky is going from strength to strength
words by Dominic Roskrow
photography by Johan Olsson
pioneer spirit
It started as a late-night whisky-fuelled conversation exactly 10 years ago. It has resulted in a great Swedish success story – a multi-million kronor business that is making waves across the world. Mackmyra Svensk Whisky is starting to build export markets and is picking up accolades from international critics and at the world’s most prestigious drinks competitions.
And if you think outstanding Swedish whisky is about as likely as a successful Swiss sailing team, check who the winner of the last two America’s Cups was, then read what whisky writer Jim Murray has to say about Mackmyra in his Whisky Bible. He’s chosen its whiskies for awards two years in a row.
Mackmyra is based in an old industrial suburb of the same name outside Gävle, 90 minutes’ drive north of Stockholm. It now employs about 30 people and will this year have a turnover of more than 35m Swedish kronor (around €3.7m). Not bad for a company formed by eight friends during a skiing holiday in Salen in March 1998.
“It was a tradition for each person to bring some alcohol for the bar,” says managing director and one of the founders, Magnus Dandanell. “That year all eight of us brought malt whisky. So it resulted in us talking about whisky, why there was no Swedish whisky, and what there was to stop us making one.”
The cooper prepares
the barrels; juniperspiced
smoke adds
a distinct Swedish
flavour; vast copper
stills where the whisky
process begins
Many of us have fantasised about pursuing a dream over a drink or two, but who actually follows through? The unusual thing here is that some of the group persevered with the idea and the seeds of a new business were sown. Within a year the eight whisky-lovers had put the plan into action and were ready to produce malt – and they did so without major funding.
“We didn’t think we would get financing from the bank or elsewhere because it was at the time of the internet boom and all we had was a low-tech idea and no evidence to show it would succeed,” says Dandanell. “But we had a group of people with various skills, ranging from manufacturing and chemistry to marketing and design. So we set out to do it ourselves and saved a lot of money as a result. It would have cost us SEK 10m (around €1.06m) just for technical consultancy work otherwise.
“We agreed to give up our holidays, new cars and so on for one year and spend the money on the whisky project. And we agreed that if it didn’t work we’d make enough whisky for each of us to take a barrel away and so the project would have had some benefit.”
The group travelled to distilleries in Scotland and Ireland and realised early on that although the overall whisky-making process was very similar from place to place, each distillery had its individual quirks. So the decision was taken to make whisky that was as Swedish as possible.
The first stroke of genius came when the group decided to use the internet to see if anyone else wanted to pay 1,000 kronor to become members of the project, and join the founding team in making decisions on everything from how to put the distilling equipment together to what strain of barley to use and which recipes to follow. Within two weeks they had 300 members and after a couple of months there were more than 1,000, which gave the company a considerable cash flow. The membership idea was to have another benefit down the line, too. It built a huge loyalty among Swedish drinkers, guaranteeing that future whisky releases would be snapped up.
The friends built their first pot still themselves – a small copper still that could produce a modest 30 litres of spirit in each run, a fraction of the amount needed to fill a 250-litre or 300-litre cask. Next they built mini 30-litre oak casks especially, a decision that would have a double benefit: firstly because whisky matures quicker in smaller casks and secondly, because now the company sells hundreds of 30-litre casks to individuals who simply couldn’t have afforded the investment for a bigger cask.
So great was the interest in the initial spirit run that the decision to invest properly in the project was taken early on, in 2000. The group sourced a site for a proper distillery at a former power plant and dairy at Mackmyra, and the company as we know it today started to take shape.
Expansion from then was rapid. By 2002 it was necessary to issue shares to raise a further SEK 25m (around €2.6m) and bring in bigger stills from Scotland.
German and Swedish companies were also employed to put in other equipment and piping. “Half the shares were bought by small investors including only a tiny fraction from the bank,” says Dandanell. “Half came from the Farmers’ Association who could see the benefits to them through the use of Swedish barley.”
Mackmyra distillery’s
tranquil setting
The farmers’ link is particularly paying off now. While many distillers struggle through a worldwide shortage of the grain and a doubling of price as a result, Mackmyra is secure in its supply through its local contacts.
The Swedish link permeates all through the Mackmyra brand. Swedish oak is used in the barrels, peat to dry the barley is sourced from regions of Sweden that were once covered by the Baltic Sea, giving the fuel a uniquely salty flavour, and some barley is dried over juniper branches in the traditional Swedish manner.
The resulting whisky, named Preludium, which only started appearing on general sale in 2006, is an acquired taste but one that is going from strength to strength with each new bottling and is starting to make the world sit up and take notice. Less sweet and fruity than most Scottish single malts, it has a more savoury, rootsy, spicy and resinous flavour.
When a batch of Mackmyra whisky is released through Sweden’s state-controlled liquor outlets, it’s a big event. Sweden hasn’t seen queues like it since Abba last toured, and each bottling always sells out on the same day that it is released.
The result is a thriving business. Turnover in 2006 totalled SEK 23m (around €2.5m), nearly twice that of the year before, and the latest figures for the six months to July 2007 show a turnover of more than SEK 17m, indicating that over the year the total will exceed SEK 35m (approximately €3.7m). With five visitor centres spread across Sweden and whisky generally enjoying a boom worldwide, the future’s certainly looking very bright for the company. Impressive for a bunch of engineers who had a vision over a drink or two 10 years ago.
“It certainly hasn’t been easy the whole way,” says Dandanell. “Making whisky isn’t like making vodka. But we think we have created a product that is getting better and better. And it’s uniquely Swedish – something to be truly proud of.”
magnus dandanell shares his business philosophy
1. Don’t rush into anything – “With whisky you have no choice because time is part of the equation. And as a result we made few mistakes on the way. Had we been able to move faster we might have got quite a bit wrong.”
2. Listen to others – “We found that people were only too happy to give us advice and help us out. That sort of input can make all the difference.”
3. Try and find a unique selling point – “We tried to avoid copying Scotland with our whisky. We used unique Swedish ingredients to create something different.”
4. Be transparent and involve people – “From the outset we got other people involved. Not only did that provide a lot of ideas but it guaranteed a ready market when we came to sell the product.”
5. Be flexible – “Where we are now is not where we set out to be. People offered ideas and we listened and we made use of whatever came along, like the maturing sites – one is in an old iron mine, another on an island in the centre of Stockholm.”
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