The Arran Brewery will be wondering if it made a wise choice locating its new development in Dreghorn, in North Ayrshire, after it suffered three breakins in three weeks since taking over the site from the Council.
Managing Director Gerald Michaluk said: “This is something we are not used to. You can leave your back door open on Arran with no fear of being robbed, everyone knows everyone and looks out for each other.
Vandals and thieves have caused over £60,000+ pounds worth of damage to the site in the time between agreeing the deal to purchase the site and us moving in. Lead has been stolen from the roof resulting in major water damage internally, the copper boilers have been stolen from all three buildings, leaving one boiler house flooded.
We have employed our first three staff but the breakings continue and currently thieves are trying to steal kitchen equipment, this is all causing unbudgeted for work and if it continues will cause us delays in creating the over 30 jobs planned for the new facility.
If crime is a serious issue in the area its time the good citizens fight back and retake their neighbourhood from the criminals. These boilers they stole are large and someone must have seen something, further they must have sold them somewhere. Someone must know who these thieves are and I urge anyone with information to report it to the police so these people can be removed from society, for a short time at least.
Our site is monitored by CCTV, which clearly was no deterrent, but as the police examine the images I hope they will help convict the culprits. We now have an extra four cameras covering the site and SERCO monitoring the alarms. However, it will be our neighbours we will be relying on to report any suspicious activity so we can make the whole area a crime free zone”.
Dreghorn has been chosen to house the breweries bottling hall, research and development centre and Scotland’s first Sake brewery. It will contain a visitor centre designed to attract around 30,000 visitors a year to the area with the a positive spin offs for tourism and local business.