In this interview, Sarah Badesha, Head of Engineering at Chivas Brothers, reflects on how Scotland’s whisky industry balances deep-rooted tradition with the realities of modern global demand.
While whisky remains a craft that relies on expertise, time and care, she explains that evolution has been unavoidable in order to produce at scale. Fundamental methods such as distillation and maturation have remained largely unchanged for generations, but the way whisky is bottled and prepared has shifted significantly over time.
At the Kilmalid distillery site in Dumbarton, which has been operating since the early 1980s, manufacturing has moved away from labour-intensive, manual processes toward more automated systems. In the past, production relied heavily on hands-on, lower-skilled roles. Today, the site supports a wide range of outputs, from high-volume products that demand speed and efficiency to specialist bottles that still require careful hand finishing.
To manage this complexity, modern tools such as automation, digital data and camera-based inspection are now essential alongside traditional craftsmanship. A major investment programme, known as Project Optimus, is transforming the site’s Leven and Clyde bottling halls by replacing outdated equipment with faster, more capable production lines. Sarah stresses that the success of such change depends on how well it is introduced. A broad, cross-functional team was involved from the outset, spanning engineering, supply chain, bottling, and training.
Operators were engaged early, contributed to line design, attended factory acceptance testing, and received extensive training. This inclusive approach helped build trust, understanding and a shared sense of responsibility for the transformation. Automation, she notes, must be applied thoughtfully. Ultra-premium whiskies, some valued at extraordinary prices, are treated as works of art and should never be fully automated. However, for complex luxury products like Royal Salute, bespoke robotic solutions have been developed to handle delicate packaging, showing how technology can enhance production without compromising quality.
Video transcript
Whisky, a centuries old, key heritage product of Scotland, a drink that will always need skill and patience to produce but to meet its modern day global demand change was always inevitable.
The processes around distillation and maturation haven’t massively changed. We still make whiskey the same way. This factory that we’re standing in has been here since 1982 and if you look back, we’ve got some old pictures. It was much more manual. There was less automation and many more kind of low skill jobs involved in making it. On this site, we do everything from high speed and high volume products, where we need efficient and modern manufacturing processes, we need automation. We need camera inspection. We need digital information to help us run the lines, but we also still retain the capability and the requirement to hand fill bottles and hand finish bottles.
A transformation involving substantial capital investments is set to revolutionise the Leven and Clyde bottling factories on this site. Project Optimus has replaced obsolete equipment with modern, high speed lines, but with any transformation, change must be managed properly.
For this first phase, we set up a really wide team that covered all of the departments within manufacturing, from supply chain, engineering, training, bottling, etc, and they were part of that. They helped build the programme of what they needed to do in their departments to support the dates of install and when the lines would be coming up. Communication is not even big enough a word. They felt ownership of it. And we also took the approach where we involved the operators in the design of the lines. And we also took the people who would be operating the machines once they were in situ. We took them out to the factory acceptance tests. There was a big training programme, so as a combination of like practical work, but also letting people know what you’re what you’re planning to do, how it impacts them and why it’s the best thing for long term future of this site.
While automation is playing a key role at Kilmalid, it’s about knowing when and where to deploy it.
We have products that sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds, and some that are auctioned for charity that are essentially pieces of art. Now, you’re never going to automate the bottling and finishing of those products, and you never should try. However, one example I can give is on our Royal Salute line, which is a 21 year old blended luxury whisky and some quite difficult packaging, a coloured flag in for example, we’ve worked to develop robotic packing solutions. So we didn’t feel that an off the shelf packer was something that we could do because of the delicate nature of the product. So, we developed our own solution in partnership with a robotics company. So, that’s an example where you can automate, but you shouldn’t always, in some cases.
Additional video courtesy of Freepik
Music credit: Alexander Nakarada, The Parting Glass
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