Chapel Down raises 90% of funding goal

By Lisa Riley

Published: 28 June, 2021

Chapel Down has raised more than 90%, or £6.3m, of its funding goal in just over three weeks, with more than 3,600 investors joining it so far.

The English winemaker launched its current crowdfunding campaign at the beginning of this month with the aim of raising up to £7m to help it expand its vineyards in the North Downs and ramp up exports.

The campaign, launched with the online equity crowdfunding service Seedrs, has allowed the public to collectively buy up to 9.1 million shares at 59.5p each, raking in as much as £5.5m. It will add to the £1.4m worth of shares to be bought up by the winemaker’s directors and backers.

Chapel Down said it had been “blown away” by the support received. “In just over three weeks, we've raised a phenomenal £6.3m, or 90% plus of our funding goal".

On Seedrs, it added, this made Chapel Down the largest raise via non institutional investors; the fastest food & beverage campaign to reach 2000 investors and the most popular food & beverage campaign to have launched on the platform.

Chapel Down plans to use the money to scale up its wineries and finish planting vines on the North Downs, with the expectation of producing an extra 500,000 bottles of English sparkling wine a year.

Some of the cash will also help develop its online sales portal and export business, it has said.

Chapel Down has run a number of crowdfunding campaigns, including in 2014 when it broke records for raising £2.9m in 10 days in a funding round that eventually raised £4m.

Simultaneously with launching the latest crowdfunding campaign, Chapel Down reported a 3% drop in sales for the year to December, while its pre-tax loss grew to £7.9m from a loss of £4.3m a year earlier.

That was despite a 38% jump in wine sales and a 467% rise in DTC sales in 2020.

Last week, Chapel Down announced that it had won a total of two trophies, four gold, three silver and three bronze medals at the Wines of Great Britain Awards announced last week.