Chapel Down raises £6m to chase 1% of global Champagne sales
The Kent winemaker will spend most of a £5.5m placing on a faster press that turns still wine into higher-margin fizz, two years ahead of schedule.
Chapel Down is raising £6m to build a faster wine press at its Tenterden winery, racing to turn more of its harvest into English sparkling wine years ahead of its own schedule.
The Kent winemaker launched the raise on 4 November: a £5.5m placing at 43 pence a share through an accelerated bookbuild, plus a £0.5m retail offer with terms still to come. Shares rose 5.9% to 45.00p in London on the day.
About £4.5m of the proceeds will fund a new soft pressing facility at Tenterden, with the rest going to working capital for higher traditional method sparkling production. The company expects the press running in time for the 2027 harvest, with a target internal rate of return above 20%.
Chapel Down is betting that pressing faster beats planting more vines.
A faster press frees up the harvest
The new press should cut Chapel Down's harvest pressing window by nine days and let it handle bigger yields in-house rather than sending overflow fruit elsewhere. That alone should move around 300,000 bottles a year out of lower-margin still and carbonated wine and into higher-margin traditional method sparkling, adding roughly £2m in annual gross margin.
Annual sparkling output at Tenterden should climb from 2.1 million bottles in an average harvest to 2.4 million, and as high as 2.8 million when the vines deliver more fruit.
Sparkling already carries the business
The shift is already visible in the numbers. In the six months to 30 June, net sales rose 19% to £9.4m and gross profit climbed 28% to £4.7m, with sparkling wine making up 74% of wine sales, up from 70% a year earlier.
Chief executive James Pennefather, who joined Chapel Down from The Lakes Distillery in February 2025, pointed in July to that same momentum behind April's upgraded profit outlook, which also credited sparkling wine for the gains. The new target is 2.5 million bottles of traditional method sparkling wine a year by 2033, matching what the company calls 1% of global Champagne volumes — two years earlier than its previous 2035 goal.
Champagne's own 2026 harvest fell 48% after frost and drought, tightening supply across the Channel just as Kent is trying to press faster. The press itself won't run until next autumn. Until then, Chapel Down will sell what it can't process as still wine and wait for 2027.
