Royal Elizabeth Bond

The challenge

Royal Elizabeth Bond is an independent cask storage facility on a 150-acre former Royal Navy victualling yard near the Forth Bridge in Dalmeny, just outside Edinburgh. With planning consent for over 800,000 square feet of new-build storage and an eventual capacity of around 1.1 million casks, the team had a rare opportunity: to build from scratch rather than inherit decades of paper delivery orders and spreadsheets.

Each cask has around 30 different data fields to capture and record. At the scale Royal Elizabeth Bond is building towards, that volume of data simply does not fit on a spreadsheet. Manual entry is slow, vulnerable to error, and hard to maintain. The consequences of getting it wrong are significant when you are holding casks on behalf of distillers, brokers, and private owners.

The reform of WOWGR in March 2025 also placed the responsibility for secure cask records squarely on the warehouse operator, meaning the warehouse's own records are now the primary safeguard standing between a cask owner and uncertainty. At the same time, a BBC Scotland investigation had exposed widespread cask investment fraud, with victims sold casks that were overpriced, sold twice, or did not exist at all. Trust and traceability had never mattered more.

The solution

Rather than inheriting the old way of doing things, Royal Elizabeth Bond chose to build on digital foundations before the first cask arrived on site. After reviewing server-based, cloud-based, off-the-shelf, and fully bespoke options, the team selected Proof 8.

Every cask is assigned a Digital Deed via a QR code. This digital identity captures the cask's history, ABV, ownership details, and location, and it stays with the cask for its entire life. Pallets carry their own QR codes, so the team can scan and immediately see what casks are on them and where they sit in the warehouse. The system prevents duplication of cask numbers entirely, removing a category of error that would otherwise require manual investigation.

When casks arrive from another Proof 8 user (such as Annandale Distillery), the transfer is digital and takes minutes rather than half a day. The team checks that what is in front of them matches the transfer and finalises it on the spot.

The outcome

Onboarding a delivery of around 100-150 casks that might previously have taken up to a day now takes around 30 minutes. The team is freed to onboard more casks, carry out sampling and regauging, and turn around customer requests far more efficiently.

For private cask owners and distillers, a Digital Deed provides verified provenance and peace of mind in place of unreliable, error-prone paper certificates. Proof 8 is recognised by HMRC, and enables cask owners to see their cask, their liquid, and the key information attached to it at any time. Monthly WOWGR reporting is kept to no more than an hour, working from accurate, real-time data.

As Royal Elizabeth Bond builds out its estate towards 1.1 million casks, Proof 8 provides the operational foundation to scale without losing control.