Sloemotion Distillery, the York-based premium craft distillery that uses foraged British hedgerow fruits and botanicals in its award-winning drinks, has proved that being green and sustainable makes good business sense as it extends listings in Co-op, Liberty and Morrisons.
To celebrate B-Corp Month in March, the business is further cementing its green-credentials by being approved to start its very own B-Corp certification journey. The process will look at five different categories: governance, workers, customers, community and the environment.
The craft distillery, renowned for using foraged hedgerow botanicals in its small-batch spirits and liqueurs, believes it already runs a carbon neutral business and is signing up to demonstrate its strong social and environmental credentials.
Phil Dibbs, Managing Director at Sloemotion Distillery said: “Consumers are increasingly hunting down products with strong environmental credentials, and we’ve certainly benefitted from this. We were ‘green’ long before it became trendy, and we are always looking at new ways to reduce our environmental impacts. Already this year we moved all our bottle supply to Leeds, just down the road from us and changed our Finders range to recycled glass. Our passion for environmental and ethical distilling has paid dividends with increased listings with retailers so, starting our B Corp certification journey is the obvious next step.”
This focus on sustainability and protecting the countryside has helped the business secure and extend listings for both its Hedgerow and Finders Spirits ranges in supermarkets and retailers; Co-op, Morrisons, Booths and Liberty.
The business began 20 years ago when a farming initiative to improve wildlife resulted in an abundance of sloes. For Joff Curtoys, a trained environmentalist and conservationist, who grew up sipping his father’s Sloe Gin, a seed of an idea was sown to turn the bounty of fruit into a business that would also support the biodiversity goals of its founders.
Joff, who sits on the Castle Howard Rewilding and Conversation Advisory Committee, has also created species-rich mini meadows around the company buildings and continues to work with the land manager at Green Farm creating wildlife habitats, including wild bird feed crops and woodland.
When it came to a still, the business kept to its sustainable mission with the installation of a highly efficient, low energy iStill. It uses just 20% of the energy that a copper still does, with a highly insulated and internally heated process providing improved accuracy and reduced energy use. Meanwhile, all electricity used at the Barton-le-Willows farm comes from a renewable energy supplier and following installation of a new 38K litre tank in 2020, all waste-water is now taken by a local anaerobic biodigester.
Joff Curtoys, Founder & Creative Director, added: “A traditional feature of distilleries is that they are very hot places because the copper is so conductive, wasting energy and heat. We don’t waste energy because our still is so well insulated and controlled; it’s always cool in here, literally and metaphorically.”
In other green news, it has relaunched its Sloemotion Liqueurs range in new glass bottles which are now sourced from Allied Glass in Leeds rather than Europe and removed all plastic packaging.
Sloemotion Distillery begins the rigorous B Corp accreditation process this Spring. To achieve the B Corp certification a company’s performance is assessed on a points system and measured against five categories: governance, workers, customers, community, and the environment. A lengthy exam is also undertaken. Less than 5,000 businesses in the world have been certified to date.
Sloemotion Distillery products are now stocked in 35 Co-Op Group stores and 36 Central England stores. Alongside, new listings for Finders in Liberty, nine Morrisons stores in Yorkshire, Booths, Berry Brothers & Rudd and 350 farm shops, food hall, garden centres and delis across the UK.
Sloemotion Distillery has engaged Better Not Stop to help them attain B Corp. BNS are an agency who work with companies worldwide to implement sustainable strategies and frameworks that give as much consideration to social and environmental impact as they do to financial returns.