The Black Isle Brewery is plotting a major expansion including a bar, visitor centre and restaurant in Inverness.
The company has lodged a screening application to Highland Council for a five-acre site at the city’s biggest retail park in Eastfield Way.
It would also include a new brewery.
In its application, the Black Isle Brewing Company has included a drawing showing how the development could look.
What next for the brewery application?
The drawing shows a site centred around a production building, with a brewhouse and a shop on one side and a taphouse and storage on the other.
Details are scant but it also shows an external courtyard in front of the main building. As well as a large service yard to the rear and west of it.
The site is located to the west of the first roundabout at Inverness Shopping Park.
The retail park is already home to a number of big names like Tesco, Costa, Pizza Hut and Burger King.
This application is not a full planning application at this stage.
Instead, this one will give Highland Council and the developer an idea of whether or not further environmental screening needs to take place.
This stage of the process has a deadline of June 5.
Growing success of the Black Isle Brewery
The Black Isle Brewery has been asked for comment.
It is not specified within the application whether success here would change the company’s plans for the base it already has in Allangrange, near Munlochy.
Given its name and origin story, it seems unlikely that would change.
The company has already successfully branched into the hospitality trade – with the Black Isle Bars in Inverness’s Church Street and Gordon Square in Fort William regularly earning rave reviews.
The business was launched by David Gladwin in 1998. It remains focused on using only organic ingredients.
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