##{"id":97297,"date":"2021-10-18T19:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T08:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/18\/tasmanias-lark-distilling-co-to-acquire-pontville-distillery-and-estate\/"},"modified":"2021-10-18T19:02:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T08:02:00","slug":"tasmanias-lark-distilling-co-to-acquire-pontville-distillery-and-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/18\/tasmanias-lark-distilling-co-to-acquire-pontville-distillery-and-estate\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasmania&#8217;s Lark Distilling Co. to Acquire Pontville Distillery and Estate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HOBART, <span class=\"xn-location\">Australia<\/span>, <span class=\"xn-chron\">Oct. 18, 2021<\/span> \/PRNewswire\/ &#8212;<b>&#160;Lark Distilling Co. Limited<\/b>&#160;(ASX: LRK) (&#8216;<b>Lark<\/b>&#8216; or &#8216;<b>the Company<\/b>&#8216;), <span class=\"xn-location\">Australia&#8217;s<\/span> leading distiller of single malt whisky, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a binding agreement for the acquisition of Kernke Family Shene Estate Pty Ltd, the owner of the Pontville Distillery and Estate (&#8216;<b>the<\/b> <b>Acquisition&#8217;<\/b>), the construction of a new 1 million litre distillery on the acquired land and the acceleration of Lark&#8217;s export strategy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"PRN_ImbeddedAssetReference\" id=\"DivAssetPlaceHolder9664\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mma.prnasia.com\/media2\/1662557\/Bill_Lark_and_Chris_Thomson_Pontville.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mma.prnasia.com\/media2\/1662557\/Bill_Lark_and_Chris_Thomson_Pontville.jpg?p=medium600\" title=\"Lark Distilling Co. Limited's Founder and Global Ambassador Bill Lark with Master Distiller Chris Thomson at Pontville Distillery and Estate in Tasmania, Australia.\" alt=\"Lark Distilling Co. Limited's Founder and Global Ambassador Bill Lark with Master Distiller Chris Thomson at Pontville Distillery and Estate in Tasmania, Australia.\" \/><\/a><br \/><span>Lark Distilling Co. Limited&#8217;s Founder and Global Ambassador Bill Lark with Master Distiller Chris Thomson at Pontville Distillery and Estate in Tasmania, Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The total consideration for the Acquisition is <span class=\"xn-money\">$40 million<\/span> comprised of <span class=\"xn-money\">$38.5 million<\/span> in cash and <span class=\"xn-money\">$1.5 million<\/span> in Lark shares<b><b><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/b><\/b> to be issued to the vendors. In order to fund the Acquisition, Lark is undertaking an equity raising of approximately <span class=\"xn-money\">$53 million<\/span> comprised of a fully underwritten unconditional placement of <span class=\"xn-money\">$46.5 million<\/span> (&#8216;<b>Institutional Placement<\/b>&#8216;) and a non-underwritten conditional placement of <span class=\"xn-money\">$6.4m<\/span> (&#8216;<b>Conditional Placement<\/b>&#8216;, together the &#8216;<b>Placement<\/b>&#8216;). A total of 10.6 million new fully paid shares are expected to be issued, representing approximately 16.8% of issued capital. <\/p>\n<p>Directors of the Company are highly supportive of the Acquisition and intend to subscribe for <span class=\"xn-money\">$6.4m<\/span> worth of shares via the Conditional Placement, subject to shareholder approval being obtained at Lark&#8217;s annual general meeting.<\/p>\n<p>The iconic estate and distillery are located 30 minutes north of Hobart at Pontville and includes 40 acres of land and buildings, a 130,000 litre distillery, a cellar door, eight bond stores, a working cooperage and the historic stables and homestead.<\/p>\n<p>Pontville will be Lark&#8217;s third working distillery in <span class=\"xn-location\">Tasmania<\/span>, alongside its Cambridge and Bothwell sites and will contribute to the inhouse production of 576,000 litres of Lark whisky each year. Lark at Pontville will commence distilling from <span class=\"xn-chron\">February 2022<\/span> with its cellar door open to the public from this date. All whisky distilling, product innovation and development will continue to be led by Lark&#8217;s Master Distiller Chris Thomson and his team.&#160;<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Lark has commenced planning for the construction of a new 1 million litre greenfield distillery on the Pontville site, expected to be commissioned in 2023.&#160;<\/p>\n<div class=\"PRN_ImbeddedAssetReference\" id=\"DivAssetPlaceHolder0\">\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/mma.prnasia.com\/media2\/1662558\/Lark_announces_acquisition_of_Pontville_assets_and_capital_raising.pdf?p=original\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mma.prnasia.com\/media2\/1662558\/Lark_announces_acquisition_of_Pontville_assets_and_capital_raising.pdf?p=pdfthumbnail\" title=\"\" alt=\"\" \/> <\/a> <br \/><span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HOBART, Australia, Oct. 18, 2021 \/PRNewswire\/ &#8212;&#160;Lark Distilling Co. Limited&#160;(ASX: LRK) (&#8216;Lark&#8216; or &#8216;the Company&#8216;), Australia&#8217;s leading distiller of single&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}