Whitsunday council approves Top Shelf plans for $25m Bowen agave distillery

An Australian-first agave farm and distillery in the Whitsundays will power ahead with plans to capitalise on our insatiable thirst for the spirit with the final ticks needed to make it a reality.

Top Shelf International’s proposed agave distillery south of Bowen has notched a massive win after Whitsunday Regional Council unanimously approved the company’s plans.

The company is now free to transform Bowen into a concentrated hub of agave and liquor production.

Whitsunday Regional Council Acting Mayor Mike Brunker said the distillery would be a “great thing” for the area, and the cruise ship industry’s return could bring in tours of people eager to taste the spirit.

“They (Top Shelf) are all good to go,” he said.

“They have been planting for the past 12 months.

“It will be unbelievable.”

Gordon Gould Ipson director Paul Ipson designed the farm perspective for Top Shelf International's agave farm at Eden Lassie, south of Bowen. Picture: Contributed

The Melbourne-based whiskey and vodka distiller will deliver a uniquely Whitsunday product to the Australian market, which has proven to be among the largest consumers of tequila behind only the US and Mexico.

Proponents say the distillery could one day become a $100m turnover export business.

The entire distillery, production facility and visitor centre is pegged at $25m.

To support its environmental credentials, Top Shelf also hopes to power the distillery with world-first hydrogen and solar technology.

Top Shelf is an ASX-listed company with a market capitalisation of about $80m.

The company acquired Eden Lassie in December 2020 where its Blue Agave crop is already well established.

Top Shelf bought the agave from a sugar cane farmer in Ayr, where about 2000 plants had been planted more than a decade ago as an experimental crop.

Managing director Drew Fairchild previously said the company had conducted a series of distillation trials producing a spirit of “softness and elegance”.

“It’s a very, very high quality product,” he said.

“I sent some to the CEO of a tequila company in New York.

“They were most impressed.”

Mr Fairchild said the farm could potentially support a million plants, producing three million litres of agave spirit a year and placing the company among the top 25 producers.

He said Australians were the third-biggest consumers of tequila per capita, behind the US and Mexico and consumption of the spirit was booming.

In the US it is a $10b a year industry.