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Buro Happold plans Cornish geothermal rum distillery
Artist's impression of how the rum maturation facility could look (image courtesy of Grimshaw Architects)
Consultancy Buro Happold is leading a study into the use of high-temperature geothermal heat pumps that it hopes will provide low-carbon heat for maturing rum at a distillery in Cornwall.
The Cornish Geothermal Distillery Company (CGDC) has won
funding from the UK government’s Green Distilleries Competition for the study.
The aim is to harness renewable waste heat and power from Geothermal Engineering geothermal power plant at United Downs, Cornwall.
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CGDC’s Celsius rum cask maturation facility aims to be the first commercial entity to connect directly to the waste heat output from the power plant, and boost it to run heat-intensive distillery processes, using an innovative high temperature heat pump (HTHP) solution they are developing with Buro Happold.
Image courtesy of Grimshaw Architects
The HTHP technology they are developing also has the
potential to be applied to different sources of low-grade waste industrial heat
where geothermal heat is unavailable.
CGDC has submitted outline plans for land adjacent to GEL’s power
plant, and is awaiting consideration by Cornwall Council planning committee.
If the scheme is granted permission, phase one of the £10m would
start with the decontamination and restoration of the site’s historic features and
natural heathland habitats, ahead of the erection of an ‘cask maturation biome’
and visitor centre.
The government’s Green Distilleries Competition, part of the £1bn Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, has awarded a total of £10m to 17 initiatives in Scotland and England designed to help UK distilleries go green by switching to low-carbon fuels. This is the first phase of the government’s funding programme, with a second phase scheduled to open in April.
Nick Boid, associate at Buro Happold said: “This funding gives us the chance to deliver a truly pioneering and game-changing project in the industry in terms of sustainability.
“The Green Distilleries call has provided a unique
opportunity to develop and showcase a viable commercial prospect that could
really help decarbonise the distilleries sector, by proving the potential to
exploit waste industrial heat and renewable power, replacing traditional
sources of heat and power for heat intensive distillation processes.”
CGDC founder Matt Clifford said: “The opportunity to harness waste geothermal heat to provide a truly sustainable source of renewable power is for us the ‘holy grail’ of technological research.”
The January/February 2026 issue of Construction Management magazine is now available to read in digital format.
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