(TDB) - Europe’s largest wine warehouse and distribution centre just got bigger, with a sixth bottling line allowing it to now fill 1,200 bottles of wine every minute.

The new high-speed bottling line at Accolade Park in Bristol, owned by Accolade Wines, producer of Hardys, Banrock Station, Echo Falls and Kumala, was officially opened by DEFRA Minister George Eustice this week.

When it opened in January 2009 the state-of-the-art facility was able to fill a comparatively few 400 glass bottles every minute. With the advent of its sixth bottling line, it is now able to fill 1,200 bottles of wine every minute, tripling its output to produce around 600 million bottles every year, which represents one third of all wine consumed in Britain each year.

“Accolade Park is the lynchpin of Accolade Wines’ European marketing strategy allowing the business to deliver quality, reliability, flexibility and range to its customers in the UK and in mainland Europe”, said Paul Schaafsma, chief executive officer of Accolade Wines.

The facility receives millions of litres of wine to be bottled at its facility every year from across the world. Shipping in volume halves the transportation greenhouse footprint as a container can carry 25,000l of wine, compared with 10,000l transported as pallets of bottles.

“Accolade Park is a fantastic example of how the wine industry is investing in the UK, creating new jobs at home and leading the field to find greener ways of working”, added Miles Beale, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. “Shipping wine into Britain in large volumes is more efficient, reduces fuel use and dramatically cuts carbon emissions. We are delighted to have had a chance to explain to the Minister how the UK has secured its place globally as the sixth largest wine market. Wine is now the UK’s most popular alcoholic drink and generates £17.3bn in economic activity.”