Shaping the future of whiskey warehousing

Jacqui Hanna, co-director and warehouse-keeper at The Foundry Vault, the UK’s largest Irish whiskey maturation facility, has transformed their entire warehousing operations with Proof 8, the blockchain-backed distillery and warehouse management solution. She spoke to Fionnuala Carolan about everything she has learned about the industry along the way

 

In the heart of Northern Ireland, tucked between two warehouse sites capable of holding over 300,000 whiskey casks, lives a woman whose career has taken an extraordinary turn – from interior designer to one of the most forward-thinking figures in the whiskey maturation industry. Jacqui Hanna’s journey isn’t just about business transformation; it’s about innovation, risk-taking, and rewriting the rules of an industry that has operated in the shadows for far too long

Jacqui’s career began in the world of aesthetics and spatial design. For years, she ran her own interior design business, until she became slightly disillusioned with her career path which led her to take a step back in 2012. “Something just didn’t feel right anymore,” she recalls. “I needed a break to figure out what was next.”

That moment of pause eventually intersected with her husband Stephen’s world. A seasoned builder, Stephen and Jacqui purchased a piece of land in 2018 with some disused warehousing on it—close to where Jacqui had grown up. At first, their plan was simple: apply for planning permission to build a home. But then Covid hit, life slowed down, and, as Jacqui puts it, “everything changed.”

A chance encounter

As fate would have it, Stephen took on a contract to build a house near friends of theirs in a beautiful part of the country. One of those friends was Darrell McNally, former master distiller at Bushmills and a well-respected figure in the whiskey world. Darrell had an idea: he wanted a bar built opposite the house Stephen was working on.

Stephen was too busy, but Jacqui , armed with her design experience, stepped in and offered to take on the project. The collaboration soon sparked a much bigger conversation. Darrell casually mentioned the potential of investing in whiskey casks and noted that Northern Ireland lacked any facility for third-party maturation—storage for whiskey casks on behalf of others.

“It was like a bell went off in my head,” says Jacqui . “I asked Darrell what it would take, and he said: industrial warehouses, someone to run them, and someone to work with HMRC. We already had the property and the construction expertise. I knew I could do the rest.”

The very next day, Jacqui brought a consultant to her warehouses, and a vision began to take form. Alongside Darrell’s industry insight and Stephen’s construction knowledge, Jackie took on the monumental task of changing regulations, securing permissions, and building an entirely new kind of whiskey business from the ground up.

Building before approval

Their boldest move came early on —they began building before receiving HMRC approval. “We were effectively putting our lives on the line,” Jacqui admits. “No one had done this in Northern Ireland. But we had our first potential contract within two months, and we couldn’t wait.”

The risk paid off. By November 2021, The Foundry Vault was officially operational. Today, it includes six warehouses across two sites. The second site was added in 2023, and the combined facilities now have a capacity for over 300,000 casks. Jacqui and Stephen’s house lies between the two, grounding their ever-expanding business in its community origins.

A new kind of responsibility

However, with scale came complexity. The whiskey warehousing industry, traditionally informal and handshake-driven, was ripe for reform. Jacqui quickly realized that managing other people’s casks meant managing enormous liability- millions of pounds in potential excise duty and operating within a system with no clear guidebook.

“There was a lot of misinformation and a lot of gaps,” she explains. “And I wasn’t willing to take responsibility for someone else’s shortcuts.” Traditionally, warehouse operators were seen as passive players – just a place to “shove the casks and shut the door.” But Jacqui understood that warehousing was increasingly where accountability lived, especially as whiskey stayed in storage far longer than it did in distilleries.

Adding to the complexity was ownership. Most of The Foundry Vault’s clients were agents selling casks on behalf of investors. They would provide paper certificates to clients to prove ownership—but Jacqui knew they weren’t legally binding.

“I had two solicitor friends ask me, ‘How legal are these certificates?’ And I had to say, ‘They’re not.’ I realised there was going to be a huge problem down the line when people started trying to claim or sell casks and nothing lined up.”

The digital turning point

At its worst, the warehouse was managing thousands of casks via a massive spreadsheet—used and understood by only one employee. The tipping point came when a private investigator showed up at Jacqui ’s gate, holding an ownership certificate that listed her home address. One of their client companies had been issuing fraudulent documentation.

“It was a lightbulb moment. This industry is totally unregulated. I thought, who’s going to fix this?”

That’s when Jacqui turned to Proof 8, a technology company specialising in digitilising the spirits industry, bringing greater transparency to distillery and warehouse operations. What began as a conversation soon became a close collaboration.

“Proof 8 changed everything,” she says. “They built a system that took all the weight off my shoulders. Every cask now gets a digital deed, a digital record in the form of a QR code and is fully traceable, from distillery to warehouse to end-owner. Changes in ownership are logged digitally and instantly. It’s all stored on the blockchain.”

In 2023 alone, The Foundry Vault brought in 8,000 new casks, each one now fully traceable through Proof 8’s platform. Ownership records are accessible on a client’s phone, legally sound and easily passed on to a solicitor or added to a will.

Audits, regulation, and industry-wide change

Jacqui and her team were soon put to the test. HMRC began auditing them heavily, not because they’d done anything wrong, but because they were effectively a test case for how third-party maturation should be run. For nine months, Jacqui lived with uncertainty.

“It turned out we were being used as a benchmark. They wanted to see what could go wrong in the industry and what could go right.”

Since then, the partnership with Proof 8 has only grown stronger. Stuart Maxwell, head of Product at Proof 8 explains that their system now handles reconciliation, due diligence, and real-time compliance reporting. For Jacqui , it means peace of mind. For HMRC, it means better oversight. For the industry, it could mean a lifeline.

Yet not everyone is on board. Jacqui worries that most warehouses don’t even realise the WOWGR (Warehousekeepers and Owners of Warehoused Goods Regulations) was revoked, removing a critical layer of protection. “Many don’t even know what their liability is. If a broker changes cask ownership and doesn’t tell the warehouse, that’s lost revenue. If you’re missing five changes a week, that’s thousands of pounds gone.”

The bigger picture

Today, the Foundry Vault has six full-time employees, handles casks for over 22 companies, and processes thousands of ownership changes with just a few clicks. The transformation has allowed Jacqui to shift focus, from fighting fires to future planning.

She now advocates for Proof 8 across the industry. “I want everyone to get on this system. If we all use it, it could become the industry standard and make life easier for everyone.”

Jacqui ’s optimism isn’t blind. She’s fully aware that the whiskey industry is facing challenges: trade tariffs, declining sales, fake cask scandals, and tightening planning restrictions in Ireland. But she believes the answer lies in accountability, transparency, and technology.

“We need to prove to the public that this is a legitimate, tax-free investment. It has to go back to the distilleries, to making the best whiskey in the world and we have to protect that with infrastructure that works.”

Looking ahead

The partnership between The Foundry Vault and Proof 8 has already expanded to other warehouses and distilleries in Ireland, Scotland, and even the US., where similar regulatory issues exist. Because Proof 8’s system is web-based, clients benefit from continual improvements and updates. “We have a full development team building constantly,” Stuart says. “It’s not something you can replicate in-house.”

As for her own journey, Jacqui laughs. “I was the most non-technical person five years ago. Now I think I’ve got a developer’s brain!”

And for those still clinging to spreadsheets? Jackie has one final word of advice:

“If you’re running a whiskey warehouse and not using something like Proof 8, I genuinely don’t know how you sleep at night.”