Two Drifters Distillery

Summary

Two Drifters Distillery love the planet, science & rum. They aim to create one of the first carbon-negative rum distilleries in the world to make their award-winning rum. Stocked at John Lewis & selling approximately 5k bottles since launch in 2019, they are raising to scale growth within the £1bn UK rum market.

• Rum sales increased by 165% in Europe during the third quarter of 2019
• Work with Climeworks Direct Air Capture technology to remove CO2
• Stocked nationwide in John Lewis, Virgin Wines and Master of Malt
• Winners in World Drinks Awards for rum in first year of production

Idea

In 2019 the UK bought 35m bottles of rum, worth over £1bn. That same year, we decided to capitalise on this trend by making genuine British rum within our carbon-negative distillery.

At Two Drifters Distillery, we believe that we are one of very few British distilleries that actually make rum from raw ingredients, rather than importing and flavouring it. With Russ' PhD in Organic Chemistry, we set out to make a range of award-winning rum that we see as competing with the best Caribbean rums on the market.

Since formally launching in 2019, we quickly discovered an exciting demand for our rums. We converted existing equipment to increase capacity from 80 bottles per week to an estimated 1800/week, although since then, we have sold 5k bottles globally, secured key contracts, including John Lewis (national and online), Exeter Chiefs Rum and Virgin Wines.

We have also seen significant growth in website traffic, a 404% YoY increase to 13k visits between May-Sept '20. We have an active social media community with 10k+ followers, weekly fully booked distillery tours, and regular pieces in the mainstream media including BBC, The Telegraph and The Independent.

We're raising now to grow sales into new, larger retail opportunities, who are all aiming to showcase more sustainably-made British products. Join us on our mission to make Two Drifters the world's most well-known sustainable spirit.

Team

Russ Wakeham - Founder/CEO

Russ has a PhD in Organic Chemistry and has spent many years working on carbon capture and utilisation technologies, hence the desire and ability to make the business produce more than just an eco-friendly product. Russ firmly believes that CO2 should be considered a waste product and like all waste, we should clear up after ourselves. We minimise the amount of CO2 we create, but where it is created, we remove it. First and foremost, Russ believes that Two Drifters should continue to focus on producing excellent, award-winning rum.

Gemma Wakeham - Founder/CMO

Before Two Drifters, Gemma spent six years in Medical Sales where she worked as a Business Development Manager at KCI Medical. She also has a qualification in Digital Marketing and in Social Media Management and manages all the platforms, aiming to highlight the quality and provenance of the brand, resulting in considerably higher engagement rates than the industry standard.

We believe the rum market is a very exciting place to be and we're on a mission to get Two Drifters into prime position to take a share of it.