Durham and Wearside Business Executive of the Year

Winner: Tony Cleary, managing director, Lanchester Wine Cellars Ltd, Stanley

IN its 30th anniversary year, the company Tony founded with his wife Veronica is now the UK’s fourth biggest wine bottler. Its environmental green footprint betters those of European rivals and its plant, filling 30,000 bottles an hour, is one of the most modern of its kind.

It is also the world’s largest filler of wine in handy-size bottles and imports wine in tanks and bottles from every major wine-producing country. Once a simple wine and spirit merchants run from home and delivering door-to-door by van, the company now operates a fleet of articulated trucks. Every supermarket, off-licence and trade outlet in the UK is likely to stock wine produced by Lanchester Wine Cellars.

Its overseas trade is moving into China and Taiwan. It also sells drinks-related gifts to major UK companies and employs 185 during its peak periods. Tony enjoys messing about on boats, and (obviously) wine-tasting.

(from nebusiness.co.uk)

Building one of the country’s leading wine merchants and bottling plants has been a lifetime obsession for Tony Cleary. But the boss of Lanchester Wine Cellars has always done it with a smile on his face, as Andrew Hebden discovers.

Tony Cleary may well be the first person you would turn to for a fine bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or a full-bodied Merlot. But how about 20,000 pairs of John Lennon-style sunglasses, several hundred new suitcases, or 2,000 cross-eyed teddy bears?

His 260,000sq ft of premises at the Greencroft Estate, near Stanley in County Durham, is home to some unlikely things that he has amassed over the years, mainly to give away as part of wine and spirits promotions. But it is not piles of unwanted suitcases that are giving him headaches at the moment.

As Cleary proudly shows me around the vast Greencroft Bottling plant, he is frustrated by the fact that both of his ultra-modern bottling lines are out of action just as we are taking a tour. A technical hitch has temporarily halted the lines that have been working flat out, bottling wines from all over the world 24 hours a day, six days a week.

Cleary is frustrated that I am missing out on seeing the firm’s facilities in full swing – even though it remains an impressive sight.

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