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English winery Giffords Hall aims to crowdfund major expansion drive

Published:  04 August, 2015

East-Anglian vineyard, Giffords Hall, has turned to crowdfunding website crowd2fund.com to raise capital. It is seeking £58,000 in return for a 5% equity share.

Potential investors are also offered a range of incentives, including lifetime discounts of up to 45% and regular presentation boxes of wine.

The company is currently valued at £1.1m. It plans to grow that value to £1.5m by 2018 - representing a return on investment of some 36%.

Giffords Hall is targeting either a trade sale or an AIM listing to enable shareholders to realise their investments.

Video:

Giffords Hall crowdsourcing video

Giffords Hall English wines

The company currently distributes 20,000 bottles each year. It will use the money raised through crowd2fund to expand its distribution - initially to 30,000 but with the aim of increasing that to 60,000 in the medium term.

The vineyard was established in 1990 in the Upper Stour Valley. Husband-and-wife team Linda and Guy Howard took over in 2004, and the business was incorporated in 2012.

Giffords Hall wine has won awards at both the National English & Welsh Wine Awards and the International Wine Challenge.

Sales have been increasing by 300% year on year for several years. Exports to Asia and Europe accounted for 20% of sales in 2014. UK distributors include Waitrose and Jeroboams.

Linda Howard said: "We turned to crowdfunding because we really wanted to give our very loyal customers the opportunity not only to own a stake in the company, but also to benefit from receiving a discount on our wines."

The company's crowdfunding page can be found here: https://www.crowd2fund.com/campaign/giffords-hall-vineyard-limited/producing-award-winning-wine.

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